John Locke Quotes - Page 9

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Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.

John Locke

Art, Pain, Distance

John Locke, James Augustus St. John (1872). “Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding”, p.128

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Since nothing appears to me to give Children so much becoming Confidence and Behavior, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their Age, as Dancing. I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it.

John Locke

Children, Thinking, Giving

John Locke, Ruth Weissbourd Grant, Nathan Tarcov (1996). “Some Thoughts Concerning Education: And, Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, Hackett Publishing

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Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

John Locke

Art, Memories, Practice

John Locke, James Augustus St. John (1872). “Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding”, p.37

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In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author.

John Locke

Book, Writing, Successful

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Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.

John Locke

Ambition, Hands, People

John Locke (1947). “Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer”, p.233, Simon and Schuster

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Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.

John Locke

Self, Stupidity, Attention

John Locke, George Berkeley (2010). “Locke, Berkely & Hume”, p.103, Cosimo, Inc.

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When the sacredness of property is talked of, it should be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property.

John Locke

Degrees, Doe, Should

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As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivated, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.

John Locke

Men, Land, Doe

John Locke (2012). “The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration”, p.27, Courier Corporation

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Books seem to me to be pestilent things, and infect all that trade in them...with something very perverse and brutal. Printers, binders, sellers, and others that make a trade and gain out of them have universally so odd a turn and corruption of mind that they have a way of dealing peculiar to themselves, and not conformed to the good of society and that general fairness which cements mankind.

John Locke

Book, Reading, Mind

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Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption: therefore, always, when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change.

John Locke

Moving, Together, Variables

John Locke (1840*). “The Conduct of the Understanding; By John Locke ... Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political; by Francis Bacon”, p.132

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For a man's property is not at all secure, though there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it, between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects, have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.

John Locke

Men, Thinking, Law

John Locke (1751). “Works”, p.207

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I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other.

John Locke

Lying, Government, Atheism

John Locke (1796). “A Letter Concerning Toleration”, p.10

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The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, take notice, also, that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together... which, by inadvertency, we apt afterward to talk of and condier as one simple idea.

John Locke

Simple, Reflection, Ideas

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Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other mens actions, must, as well as their own and other mens actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it.

John Locke

Men, Law, Action

John Locke (1821). “Two treatises of government”, p.305

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In the beginning, all the world was America.

John Locke

Patriotic, America, World

Second Treatise of Civil Government ch. 5, sec. 49 (1690)

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

John Locke

Men, Blood, Criminal Mind

John Locke (1821). “Two treatises of government”, p.196

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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

Children, Taught, Killing

John Locke (1727). “The works of John Locke ...”, p.53

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The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.

John Locke

Real, Simple, Views

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When I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reasonable thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world.

John Locke

Philosophy, Simple, Men

John Locke (1824). “The Works of John Locke: In Nine Volumes”, p.188

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Children generally hate to be idle; all the care then is that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them

John Locke

Children, Hate, Use

John Locke (1888*). “Some thoughts on education and an essay on the consequences of the lowering of interest and raising the value of money”

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These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.

John Locke

Reflection, Ideas, Two

1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk.2, pt.1, section 4.

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[H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

John Locke

Men, Thinking, Blood

John Locke (2015). “The Second Treatise of Civil Government”, p.82, Broadview Press

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As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellencies, what are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch, only by repeated actions.

John Locke

Exercise, Practice, Mind

John Locke (1854). “Locke's essays. An essay concerning human understanding. And A treatise on the conduct of the understanding. With the author's last additions”, p.489

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Nature never makes excellent things, for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be conceived, that our infinitely wise Creator, should make so admirable a Faculty, as the power of Thinking, that Faculty which comes nearest the Excellency of his own incomprehensible Being, to be so idlely and uselesly employ'd, at least 1/4 part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering any of those Thoughts, without doing any good to it self or others, or being anyway useful to any other part of Creation.

John Locke

Wise, Nature, Mean

John Locke (1815). “An essay concerning human understanding. Also extr. from the author's works, i. Analysis of mr. Locke's doctrine of ideas [&c.].”, p.96

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Whosoever will list himself under the banner of Christ, must, in the first place and above all things, make war upon his own lusts and vices. It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, benignity and meekness of spirit.

John Locke

Christian, War, Men

John Locke (1765). “Letters Concerning Toleration: By Iohn Locke”, p.33

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Born: August 29, 1632
Died: October 28, 1704
Occupation: Philosopher
Cite this Page: Citation

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