John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRSwas 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 Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth29 August 1632
Probability is a kind of penance, which God made, suitable, I presume to that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased to place us in here; wherein, to check our over-confidence and presumption, we might, by every day's experience, be made sensible of our short-sightedness, and liableness to error.
He that makes use of another's fancy or necessity to sell ribbons or cloth dearer to him than to another man at the same time, cheats him.
Since nothing appears to me to give Children so much becoming Confidence and Behavior, and so raise them to the conversation of those above their Age, as Dancing. I think they should be taught to dance as soon as they are capable of learning it.
He that will make good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation.
The tendency to cruelty should be watched in children and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing other animals will, by degrees, harden their hearts even toward man. Children should from the beginning, be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting living beings.
Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.
Men's happiness or misery is [for the] most part of their own making.
It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
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.
To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.
An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.
Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
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.