Quotes by John Locke

“...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivate...”

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

“For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other m...”

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”

“So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrat...”

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

“What worries you, masters you.”

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

“The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”

“It is therefore worthwhile, to search out the bounds between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, a...”

“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.”

“When we find out an Idea, by whose Intervention we discover the Connexion of two others, this is a Revelation from God to us, by the voice of Reason.”

“Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

“...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, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for libert...”

“Sec. 10. Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of hu...”

“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 have a right to. And this is making use of the power any o...”

“No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redress or security against any harm he shall do; I ask, ...”

“Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.”

“Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.”

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