John Locke

Philosopher

1632-08-29 – 1704-10-28

John Locke was an English philosopher and political thinker of the Enlightenment. He is widely known for An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government, works that shaped empiricism and liberal political theory.

Quotes by John Locke

What worries you, masters you.
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Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
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So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
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...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it)...
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Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
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The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
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For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? 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.
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We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
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...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it)...
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The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
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So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
Read quote
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? 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.
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Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.
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Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
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What worries you, masters you.
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We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
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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.
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A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.
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As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.
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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.
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