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.
– John Locke
Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves poison the fountain.
– John Locke
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
– John Locke
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but
because they are not already common.
– John Locke
A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.
– John Locke
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.
– John Locke
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the
truth.
– John Locke
The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own
consent.
– John Locke
The people are the supreme judge of how governments fulfill their mission because it is the
person who gave them power and who care as such, the ability to revoke.
– John Locke
Force is to be opposed to nothing but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any
opposition in any other case draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man.
– John Locke
Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.
– John Locke
Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom
recovered.
– John Locke
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
He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his
mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much
concerned when he misses it.
– 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
Revolt is the right of the people.
– John Locke
Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law of nature, under an obligation to
preserve, nourish and educate the children, they had begotten.
– John Locke
If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own
person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with
his freedom?
– John Locke
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those
who are around us.
– John Locke
Whenever the power that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the
protection of our properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass
or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it
presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.
– 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
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
– 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
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.
– John Locke
The knowledge of man can not extend beyond his own experience.
– John Locke
The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and
institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to
make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their
authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.
– John Locke
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, a white paper, void of all characters, without
any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.
– John Locke
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 tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor
security.
– John Locke
Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool?
– John Locke
Everyone has property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The
labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
– John Locke
But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is
oppression.
– John Locke
Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions.
– John Locke
As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the
exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.
– John Locke
There cannot any one moral rule be proposed, whereof a man may not justly demand a
reason.
– John Locke
Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or
resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally
obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers.
– John Locke
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what
we read ours.
– John Locke
Memory is the power to awaken in the mind simple ideas.
– John Locke
The need to find true happiness is the foundation of our 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,
all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting.
– John Locke
Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.
– John Locke
He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.
– John Locke
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one
of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the
inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.
– John Locke