Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Locke (English Philosopher)

John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher and political theorist. This founder of British empiricism and political liberalism greatly influenced modern philosophical empiricism and political theory through his writings. He endeavored to focus philosophy on an analysis of the extent and capabilities of the human mind. Two centuries later, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill called Locke the “unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind.”

In Two Treatises of Government (1690,) Locke justified the Revolution of 1688 by contending that, counter to the theory of the divine right of kings, the authority of rulers has a human origin and is limited. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690,) he negated that any ideas are innate, and argued instead that all knowledge is rooted in experience derived from the senses. He established that it is not possible to know everything about the world and that our inadequate knowledge must be fortified by faith.

Regarded as one of the first of the British empiricists, in the tradition of Francis Bacon, Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His works 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. Locke’s contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory even influenced the United States Declaration of Independence.

Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) argued that religion is a matter for each individual and that churches are voluntary associations. The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) provoked more controversy than the political works. Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693) argued for a broader syllabus and a more humane attitude towards pupils.

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Logic is the anatomy of thought.
John Locke
Topics: Logic

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
John Locke
Topics: Words

If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.
John Locke
Topics: Faith

All the arts of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.
John Locke

Fashion is, for the most part, nothing but the ostentation of riches.
John Locke
Topics: Fashion

The most precious of all possessions, is power over ourselves; power to withstand trial, to bear suffering, to front danger; power over pleasure and pain; power to follow our convictions, however resisted by menace and scorn; the power of calm reliance in scenes of darkness and storms. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations; he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry, and is in danger of never being good for anything.
John Locke
Topics: Self-Control

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
John Locke
Topics: Education, World

All the talk of history is of nothing almost but fighting and killing, and the honor and renown which are bestowed on conquerors, who, for the most part are mere butchers of mankind, mislead growing youth, who, by these means, come to think slaughter the most laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.
John Locke
Topics: War

Kind words prevent a good deal of that perverseness which rough and imperious usage often produces in generous minds.
John Locke
Topics: Kindness

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.
John Locke
Topics: Health, Blessings, Contentment

The great men among the ancients understood very well how to reconcile manual labour with affairs of state, and thought it no lessening to their dignity to make the one the recreation to the other. That indeed which seems most generally to have employed and diverted their spare hours, was agriculture. Gideon among the Jews was taken from threshing, as well as Cincinnatus amongst the Romans from the plough, to command the armies of their countries…and, as I remember, Cyrus thought gardening so little beneath the dignity and grandeur of a throne, that he showed Xenophon a large field of fruit trees all of his own planting … Delving, planting, inoculating, or any the like profitable employments would be no less a diversion than any of the idle sports in fashion, if men could be brought to delight in them.
John Locke

Affection endeavors to correct natural defects, and has always the laudable aim of pleasing, though it always misses it.
John Locke
Topics: Affectation

Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.
John Locke
Topics: Learning

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.
John Locke
Topics: Property

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
John Locke
Topics: Truth

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
John Locke
Topics: Words

If we rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison.
John Locke
Topics: Evils

Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge.
John Locke
Topics: Appetite

None of the things children are to learn should ever be made a burden to them, or imposed on them as a task. Whatever is so imposed presently becomes irksome; the mind takes an aversion to it, though before it were a thing of delight.
John Locke
Topics: Learning

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.
John Locke

The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
John Locke
Topics: Religion

Virtue and talents, though allowed their due consideration, yet are not enough to procure a man a welcome wherever he comes. Nobody contents himself with rough diamonds, or wears them so. When polished and set, then they give a lustre.
John Locke

Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule.
John Locke
Topics: Habit, Habits

Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure ef knowledge, and the business of the understanding; whatsoever is beside that, however authorized by consent, or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or something worse.
John Locke
Topics: Truth

Fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man’s self, and an undisturbed doing his duty whatever evils beset, or dangers lie in the way.—In itself an essential virtue, it is a guard to every other virtue.
John Locke

Virtue is everywhere that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem is called virtue.
John Locke
Topics: Virtue

He that will make a good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation.
John Locke
Topics: Leisure, America

Wit consists in assembling, and putting together with quickness, ideas in which can be found resemblance and congruity, by which to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy.
John Locke
Topics: Wit

It is labour indeed that puts the difference on everything.
John Locke

I am apt to think that men find their simple ideas agree, though in discourse they confound one another with different names.
John Locke

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