JOHN LOCKE QUOTES IV

English philosopher (1632-1704)

God is the place of spirits, as spaces are the places of bodies.

JOHN LOCKE

"An Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing All Things in God", Philosophical Works

Tags: God


And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage.

JOHN LOCKE

Second Treatise of Civil Government


Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler.

JOHN LOCKE

Some Thoughts Concerning Education


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

JOHN LOCKE

Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Tags: knowledge


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

Tags: thinking


It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding


The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: belief


A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security.

JOHN LOCKE

Second Treatise of Civil Government

Tags: death penalty


He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: words


Hunting after arguments to make good one side of a question, and wholly to neglect and refuse those which favor the other side ... [is] willfully to misguide the understanding; and is so far from giving truth its due value, it wholly debases it.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: questions


A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in.

JOHN LOCKE

Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Tags: fathers


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

Tags: respect


Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.

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

Tags: words


Men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind.

JOHN LOCKE

"Of Great Place", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political


The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again.

JOHN LOCKE

letter to Mr. Samuel Bold, May 16, 1699

Tags: thought


Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: religion


Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

JOHN LOCKE

Second Treatise of Government

Tags: tyranny


To understand political power aright, and derive from it its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.

JOHN LOCKE

Second Treatise of Government


Stubbornness and an obstinate disobedience must be mastered with blows.

JOHN LOCKE

attributed, John Locke: Prophet of Common Sense

Tags: stubbornness