John Locke: Trending quotes

John Locke trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
John Locke: 288 quotes159 likes

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

John Locke book A Letter Concerning Toleration

A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)

“If pains be to be taken to give him a manly air and assurance betimes, it is chiefly as a fence to his virtue when he goes into the world under his own conduct.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 70
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“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.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 96
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“The native and untaught suggestions of inquisitive children do often offer things, that may set a considering man's thoughts on work. And I think there is frequently more to be learn'd from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed, and the prejudices of their education.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 121
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“As men, we have God for our King, and are under the law of reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our King, and are under the law revealed by him in the gospel. And though every Christian, both as a deist and a Christian, be obliged to study both the law of nature and the revealed law, that in them he may know the will of God, and of Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent; yet, in neither of these laws, is there to be found a select set of fundamentals, distinct from the rest, which are to make him a deist, or a Christian. But he that believes one eternal, invisible God, his Lord and King, ceases thereby to be an atheist; and he that believes Jesus to be the Messiah, his king, ordained by God, thereby becomes a Christian, is delivered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the kingdom of the Son of God; is actually within the covenant of grace, and has that faith, which shall be imputed to him for righteousness; and, if he continues in his allegiance to this his King, shall receive the reward: eternal life.”

John Locke

§ 228
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

“One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 116
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“Though you give no countenance to the complaints of the querulous, yet take care to curb the insolence and ill nature of the injurious. When you observe it yourself, reprove it before the injur'd party: but if the complaint be of something really worth your notice, and prevention another time, then reprove the offender by himself alone, out of sight of him who complain'd and make him go and ask pardon, and make reparation; which ooming thus, as it were from himself, will be the more cheerfully performed, and more kindly receiv'd, the love strenghten'd between them, and a custom of civility grow familiar amongst your children.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 109
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government, Sec. 202
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

“[I am] lover of his king and country, a lover of peace and the protestant interest…[Consent] is absolutely necessary to the very being and subsistance of our government and without which our peace and religion cannot possibly be any way secured…the miscarriages of the former reigns gave a rise and a right to King William's comeing and ushered him into the throne…Let us owne King William to be our King by right…[William came] to recover our oppressed and sinkeing laws, libertys, and Religion…They who would not betray England and expose it to popish rage and revenge, who have any regard to their country, their religion, their consciences, and their estates, must maintain the bulwarke have set up against it, and which alone preserves us against a more violent inundation of all sorts of misery than that we were soe lately delivered from.”

John Locke

Letter to Edward Clarke (c. April 1690), quoted in James Farr and Clayton Roberts, 'John Locke on the Glorious Revolution: A Rediscovered Document', The Historical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 385-398.

“I doubt not but one great reason why many children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports, and trifle away all their time insipidly, is, because they have found their curiosity baulk'd, and their inquiries neglected. But had they been treated with more kindness and respect, and their questions answered, as they shuold, to their satisfaction; I doubt not but that they would have taken more pleasure in learning, and improving their knowledge, wherein there would still be newness and variety, which is what they are delighted with, than in returning over and over to the same play and play-things.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 118
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“He that thinks diversion may not lie in hard and painful labour, forgets the early rising, hard riding, heat, cold and hunger of huntsmen, which is yet known to be the constant recreation of men of the greatest condition.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 206
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“How then shall they have the play-games you allow them, if none must be bought for them?”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

I answer, they should make them themselves, or at least endeavour it, and set themselves about it. ...And if you help them where they are at a stand, it will more endear you to them than any chargeable toys that you shall buy for them.
Sec. 130
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

“faith need not be kept with heretics”
Nulla fides servanda cum Hereticis, nisi satis validi sunt ad se defendendos

John Locke

Journal entry (25 January 1676), quoted in John Lough (ed.), Locke's Travels in France 1675-1679 (Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 20.

“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, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX, sec. 123
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

“All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book IV, Ch. 20, sec. 17
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

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

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book III, Ch. 10, sec. 31
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“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 book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 199
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

“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 book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book IV, Ch. 7, sec. 11
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“Popery so threatens and so nearly surrounds us…every sober man would think it seasonable at this time that all dissenting Protestants should be brought to a good understanding and compliance one with another…I think all Protestants ought now by all ways to be stirred up against them [Catholics] as People that have declared themselves ready by blood, violence, and destruction to ruine our Religion and Government…[they] are nothing but either Enemys in our bowells or spies among us, whilst their General commanders whom they blindly obey declare warr, and an unalterable designe to destroy us.”

John Locke

'Critical Notes Upon Edward Stillingfleet's Mischief and Unreasonableness of Separation' (c. May 1681), quoted in John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 110

“The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 82
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)