John Locke Philosophical Quotations

Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio , passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.

Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.

The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone

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.

Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.

Where there is no property there is no injustice.

Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

All wealth is the product of labor.

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.