Famous John Locke Quotations

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"Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing."
by John Locke
"All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it."
by John Locke
"The discipline of desire is the background of character."
by John Locke
"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it."
by John Locke
"There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse."
by John Locke
"Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state."
by John Locke
"Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man."
by John Locke
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."
by John Locke
"Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided."
by John Locke
"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."
by John Locke
"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself."
by John Locke
"That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art."
by John A. Locke
"I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment."
by John Locke
"Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing."
by John Locke
"A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world."
by John Locke
"A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world"
by John Locke
"All wealth is the product of labor."
by John Locke
"An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards."
by John Locke
"Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge. One great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected."
by John Locke
"Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, somethimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them."
by John Locke
"Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues."
by John Locke
"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts"
by John Locke
"I think it every man's indispensable duty to do all the service he can to his country and I see not what difference he puts between himself and his cattle who lives without that thought."
by John Locke
"Logic is the anatomy of thought."
by John Locke
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without anyother reason but because they are not already common."
by John Locke
"Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip."
by John Locke
"Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain."
by John Locke
"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
by John Locke
"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts."
by John Locke
"The action of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts."
by John Locke
"The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good."
by John Locke
"There being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species should be equal amongst one another without subordination or subjection"
by John Locke
"There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education."
by John Locke
"We are a kind of Chameleons, taking our hue - the hue of our moral character, from those who are about us."
by John Locke
"The great men among the ancients understood very well how to reconcile manual labour with affairs of state, and thought it no lessening to their dignity to make the one the recreation to the other. That indeed which seems most generally to have employed and diverted their spare hours, was agriculture. Gideon among the Jews was taken from threshing, as well as Cincinnatus amongst the Romans from the plough, to command the armies of their countries...and, as I remember, Cyrus thought gardening so little beneath the dignity and grandeur of a throne, that he showed Xenophon a large field of fruit trees all of his own planting . . . Delving, planting, inoculating, or any the like profitable employments would be no less a diversion than any of the idle sports in fashion, if men could be brought to delight in them."
by John Locke
"Had the King of Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long hid in the dark entrails of America."
by John Locke
"This tendency [to cruelty] should be watched in them [children], and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage.  For the custom of tormenting and killing other animals will, by degrees, harden their hearts even towards men....  And they, who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind.  Children should from the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting living beings....  And indeed, I think people from their cradles should be tender to all sensible creatures....  All the entertainment and talk of History is of nothing but fighting and killing; and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors, who, for the most part, are but the great butchers of mankind, further mislead youth."
by John Locke
"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else."
by John Locke
"Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding."
by John Locke
"Government has no other end, but the preservation of property."
by John Locke
"Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule."
by John Locke
"We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us."
by John Locke
"To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament."
by John Locke
"To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality."
by John Locke
"Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu : Nothing is in the understanding, which was not first perceived by some of the senses."
by John Locke
"Where there is no property there is no injustice."
by John Locke
"I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits."
by John Locke
"Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
by John Locke
"It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach."
by John Locke
"We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves."
by John Locke
"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish ..."
by John Locke
"As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can hav..."
by John Locke
"If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine instituti..."
by John Locke
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of laws, wh..."
by John Locke
"The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities,..."
by John Locke


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