“Since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas … the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification … has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than another to signify any idea.”

Book III, Ch. 9, sec. 4
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update April 11, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas … the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification … has …" by John Locke?
John Locke photo
John Locke 144
English philosopher and physician 1632–1704

Related quotes

Leopold I of Belgium photo

“I will be more and more concerned with giving you sound and true political ideas, few people are better able to do this than I; since the age of 16 I have been involved in the big affairs of Europe.”

Leopold I of Belgium (1790–1865) German prince who became the first King of the Belgians

A royal puppet show in the Belgian royal family. The education of the first Belgian royal children. (Greet Donckers) http://www.ethesis.net/koningshuis/koningshuis_deel_II.htm#Hoofdstuk_2:_Publieke_sfeer%C2%A0_ AKP, Fund Leopold I, III Archives Conway, Letter from King Leopold I to Prince Leopold, 11 November 1850, 20/3.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Paul Dirac photo
Alain photo

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Propos sur le Religion no. 74 (1938), under the pen name Alain.
Alternate translation: “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one we have.” IZQuotes https://izquotes.com/quote/%C3%A9mile-chartier/nothing-is-more-dangerous-than-an-idea-when-you-have-only-one-idea-390165 (retrieved 10/30/18).

Alfred North Whitehead photo

“With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.

Jacques Barzun photo

“No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

"The Bugbear of Relativism," p. 89
The Culture We Deserve (1989)
Context: Can an idea — a notion as abstract as Relativism — produce by itself the effects alleged? cause all the harm, destroy all the lives and reputations? I am as far as anyone can be from denying the power of ideas in history, but the suggestion that a philosophy (as Relativism is often called) has perverted millions and debased daily life is on the face of it absurd. No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism.

Nicolas Chamfort photo

“Having lots of ideas doesn't mean you're clever, any more than having lots of soldiers means you're a good general.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

On n'est point un homme d'esprit pour avoir beaucoup d'idées, comme on n'est pas un bon général pour avoir beaucoup de soldats.
Maximes et Pensées (Van Bever, Paris :1923), #446
Reflections

Jack Welch photo
Franz Marc photo

Related topics