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.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Locke
The least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy have consequences very important and of long duration.—It is with these first impressions as with a river, whose waters we can easily turn at its source; with the same facility we may turn the minds of children to what direction we please.
—John Locke
The distinguishing characters of the face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain and visible with time and age; but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children.
—John Locke
If by gaining knowledge we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands.
—John Locke
Topics: Health
Affectation in any part of our carriage is but the lighting up of a candle to show our defects, and never fails to make us taken notice of, either as wanting in sense or sincerity.
—John Locke
Topics: Affectation
Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.
—John Locke
No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
—John Locke
Topics: Experience
To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.
—John Locke
Topics: Ideas
A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.
—John Locke
Topics: Ignorance
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: Blessings, Contentment, Health
Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
—John Locke
Topics: Parents, Parenting, Family
I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
—John Locke
Topics: Questions, Learning
I am apt to think that men find their simple ideas agree, though in discourse they confound one another with different names.
—John Locke
To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.
—John Locke
Topics: Morality, Morals
Habits work more constantly and with greater force than reason, which, when we hare most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed.
—John Locke
Topics: Habit
He that has found a way to keep a child’s spirit easy, active, and free, and yet at the same time to restrain him from many things he has a mind to, and to draw him to things that are uneasy to him, has, in my opinion, got the true secret of education.
—John Locke
Topics: Education
The Care therefore of every man’s Soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself. But what if he neglect the Care of his Soul?. I answer, What if he neglects the Care of his Health, or of his Estate, which things are nearlier related to the Government of the Magistrate than the other?. Will the magistrate provide by an express Law, That such an one shall not become poor or sick?. Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the Goods and Health of Subjects be not injured by the Fraud and Violence of others; they do not guard them from the Negligence or Ill-husbandry of the Possessors themselves
—John Locke
Topics: Welfare
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
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. So far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas, so far it is ours; without that it is so much loose matter floating in our brain.
—John Locke
Topics: Literature, Reading, Books
Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.
—John Locke
Topics: Virtue
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
—John Locke
Topics: Influence, Society, Leadership, Morals
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
Cunning is the ape of wisdom.
—John Locke
Topics: Cunning
A taste of every sort of knowledge is necessary to form the mind, and is the only way to give the understanding its due improvement to the full extent of its capacity.
—John Locke
Topics: Knowledge
The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men.—It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter.—It is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting.
—John Locke
Topics: Bible
The visible mark of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of creation.
—John Locke
Topics: Miracles
Syllogism is of necessary use, even to the lovers of truth, to show them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or involved discourses.
—John Locke
Topics: Logic
Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge.
—John Locke
Topics: Appetite
There is frequently more to be learned 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
Topics: Questioning
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: America, Leisure
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
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
The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.
—John Locke
Topics: Thinking, Thoughts
If we rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison.
—John Locke
Topics: Evils
The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.
—John Locke
Topics: Knowledge, Understanding
The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.
—John Locke
Topics: Education, World
Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge. One great reason why children abandon themselves wholly to silly pursuits and trifle away their time insipidly is, because they find their curiosity balked, and their inquiries neglected.
—John Locke
Topics: Curiosity
Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural.
—John Locke
Topics: Affectation, Manners
The great art of learning, is to undertake but little at a time.
—John Locke
Topics: Learning
The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.
—John Locke
Topics: Property
Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.
—John Locke
Topics: Knowledge
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