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Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.

John Locke

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.
JOHN LOCKE

Chameleon Children Wonder
The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them.
JOHN LOCKE

Memories Names Science
Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.
JOHN LOCKE

Common Errors Neglect
As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivated, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.
JOHN LOCKE

Cultivated Labour Land Men Property
[H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.
JOHN LOCKE

Blood Men Thinking
It is labour indeed that puts the difference on everything.
JOHN LOCKE

Day Differences Labor May
Tis true that governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys a share of protection should pay out of his estate his proportion of the maintenance of it.
JOHN LOCKE

Government Libertarian Maintenance
Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.
JOHN LOCKE

Adherence Mind Prejudice
To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.
JOHN LOCKE

Love might Pregnancy
I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly: and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason.
JOHN LOCKE

Matter Religion Use
There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
JOHN LOCKE

Children Men Philosophical
I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.
JOHN LOCKE

Doubt might Self
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
JOHN LOCKE

Ends Freedom Law
Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.
JOHN LOCKE

Book Men Thinking
Whoever uses force without Right … puts himself into a state of War with those, against whom he uses it, and in that state all former Ties are canceled, all other Rights cease, and every one has a Right to defend himself, and to resist the Aggressor.
JOHN LOCKE

Canceled Force Rights Ties War
The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.
JOHN LOCKE

Atheism Church Men
I have no reason to suppose that he, who would take away my Liberty, would not when he had me in his Power, take away everything else.
JOHN LOCKE

Amendment Liberty Reason Second
So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.
JOHN LOCKE

Beast Creature Men Rational
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man.
JOHN LOCKE

Liberty Live Men Rules
Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ’tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for’t.
JOHN LOCKE

Gentleman Men Opposites
It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.
JOHN LOCKE

Mind Perfection Practice
I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men’s discourses… ‘Tis not the owning one’s dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.
JOHN LOCKE

Differences Men Thinking
When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie.
JOHN LOCKE

Dream Philosophical Reflection
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.
JOHN LOCKE

Balance Integrity Men
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.
JOHN LOCKE

Children Giving Thinking
Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern: for divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbours but the portraiture.
JOHN LOCKE

Divinity Pattern Portraiture
Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that will over-balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law.
JOHN LOCKE

Balance Law Punishment

Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.

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Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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