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Quotes by John Locke

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
– John Locke
All wealth is the product of labor.
– 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.
– John Locke
As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.
– John Locke
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.
– John Locke
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
– John Locke
Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.
– 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.
– John Locke
I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.
– John Locke
If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.
– John Locke
It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach.
– John Locke
It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.
– John Locke
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without anyother reason but because they are not already common.
– John Locke
No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
– John Locke
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
Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
– 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.
– John Locke
Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
– John Locke
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
– John Locke
Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.
– John Locke
The discipline of desire is the background of character.
– John Locke
The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.
– John Locke
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
– John Locke
The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.
– John Locke
There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.
– 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.
– 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.
– John Locke
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
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
– John Locke
Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
– John Locke
Where there is no property there is no injustice.
– John Locke
All ideas come from sensation or reflection.--Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
– 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.
– John Locke
A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.
– 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.
– John Locke
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
– 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 law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
– John Locke
The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure.
– John Locke
It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
– John Locke
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.
– John Locke
All men are liable to error and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
– John Locke