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John Locke Quotes
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John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. This is now known as empiricism. An example of Locke's belief in empiricism can be seen in his quote, "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire." This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being disproven. Challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviours of one's self. Wikipedia  

✵ 29. August 1632 – 28. October 1704
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John Locke: 144   quotes 157   likes

John Locke Quotes

“Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 67
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Men , Children

“And if he be too forward to venture upon his own strength and skill, and perplexity and trouble of a misadventure now and then, that reaches not his innocence, his health, or reputation, may not be an ill way to teach him more caution.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 94
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Health , Way

“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.

Faith

“Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Book II, Ch. 21, sec. 70
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

“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)

People

“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)

Pain , World

“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)

Men , Children , Education , Question

“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)

Men , Error , Passion

“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)

Exercises

“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)

“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)

Truth , Error

“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)

Life , Death , Men , Children

“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)

Children , Pleasure , Question , Knowledge

“[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.

Peace , Religion , Law , Way

“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)

Men , Hunger , Pain , Lie

“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)

Love , Children , Nature , Time

“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)

Game

“Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

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

Law

“He that knows anything, knows this, in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance."”

John Locke book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book IV, Ch. 3, sec. 22

“This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. VII, sec. 93
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Context: For if it be asked what security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you that it deserves death only to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be measures, laws, and judges for their mutual peace and security. But as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has a power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from or injury on that side, where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion. As if when men, quitting the state of Nature, entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws; but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of Nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

Men , Thinking

“We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those who are around us.”

John Locke

Attributed to Locke on various quotes sites and on social media, this quotation is a false rendering of "We are all a sort of chameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us: nor is it to be wondered at in children, who better understand what they see, than what they hear" from Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).
Misattributed

Color

“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

Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703) http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1726#lf0128-09_head_098

Love , Truth , World , Parting