English philosopher (1632-1704)
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man; for as to the stage, love is even matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.
JOHN LOCKE
"Of Love", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political
To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into.
JOHN LOCKE
epistle to the reader, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success; and when we have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of knowing anything; nor on the other side, question everything, and declaim all knowledge, because some things are not to be understood.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
This also shows wherein the identity of the same man consists, viz. in participation of the same continued life by particles of matter successively united to the same organized body.
JOHN LOCKE
Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding
That any man should think fit to cause another man, whose salvation he heartily desires, to expire in torments, and that even in an unconverted estate, would, I confess, seem very strange to me, and, I think, to any other also. But nobody, surely, will ever believe that such a carriage can proceed from charity, love, or good-will. If any one maintain that men ought to be compelled by fire and sword to profess certain doctrines, and confirm to this or that exterior worship, without any regard had unto their morals; if any one endeavour to convert those that are erroneous unto the faith, by forcing them to profess things that they do not believe, and allowing them to practice things that the Gospel does not permit; it cannot be doubted indeed that such a one is desirous to have a numerous assembly joined in the same profession with himself; but that he principally intends by those means to compose a truly Christian church, is altogether incredible.
JOHN LOCKE
Letters Concerning Toleration
He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.
JOHN LOCKE
Second Treatise of Civil Government
Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.
JOHN LOCKE
First Treatise of Government
Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them ... with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind, that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society, and that general fairness that cements mankind. Whether it be, that these instruments of truth and knowledge will not bear being subjected to anything but those noble ends, without revenging themselves on those who meddle with to any other purpose, and prostitute them to mean and misbecoming designs; I will not inquire. The matter of fact, I think you will find true; and there will leave it to those who sully themselves with printer's ink, till they wholly expunge all the candour that nature gives, and become the worst sort of black cattle.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Anthony Collins, June 9, 1704
For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
There is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.
JOHN LOCKE
A Letter Concerning Toleration
One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If to break loose from the bounds of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worst, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen: but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.
JOHN LOCKE
"Of Great Place", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political
Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbours but the portraiture.
JOHN LOCKE
"Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political