John Locke Quotes

What worries you, masters you.

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.

The most precious of all possessions is power over ourselves.

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

Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

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

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.

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.

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

Revolt is the right of the people

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.

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

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

[Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.

The improvement of the understanding is for two ends; first, for our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver and make out that knowledge to others.

All wealth is the product of labor.

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

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.

The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.

But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression

Don't let the things you don't have prevent you from using what you do have.

Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others

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

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

Where there is no law there is no freedom.

Don't tell me what I can't do!

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

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

Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.

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.

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?

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.

The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.

Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.

He that will have his son have respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.

When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success.

What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?

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

The body of People may with Respect resist intolerable Tyranny.

Where there is no desire, there will be no industry.

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.

With books we stand on the shoulders of giants.

He that will make good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation.