John Locke Quotes

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."

"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

"All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."

"Government has no other end than the preservation of property."

"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it."

"We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us."

"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."

"Whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire."

"Revolt is the right of the people."

"Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues."

"It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth."

"Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him."

"A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world."

"Where there is no law, there is no freedom."

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

"God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational."

"The discipline of desire is the background of character."

"There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse."

"Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches."

"Curiosity in children... is but an appetite after knowledge."

"Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered."

"Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses."

"Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others."

"The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good."

"Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule."

"Absolute monarchy is inconsistent with civil society."

"Wherever law ends, tyranny begins."

"Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state."

"The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others."

"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."

"Error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment giving assent to that which is not true."

"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself."