“The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding. By J. Locke ... Essays ... By Lord Bacon. With Sketches of the Lives of Locke and Bacon
“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.”
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding: With Sketches of the Lives of Locke and Bacon
“Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.”
Source: Essay concerning human understanding (concluded) Defence of Mr. Locke's opinion concerning personal identity. Of the conduct of the understanding. Some thoughts concerning reading and study for a gentleman. Elements of natural philosophy. New method for a common-place book
“The inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of man; insomuch, that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto other living creatures; as it is seen in the Turks, cruel people, who, nevertheless, are kind to beasts, and give alms to dogs and birds.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding: With Sketches of the Lives of Locke and Bacon
“God is the place of spirits, as spaces are the places of bodies.”
Source: Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke ...
“You shall find, that there cannot be a greater spur to the attaining what you would have the eldest learn, and know himself, than to set him upon teaching it his younger brothers and sisters.”
Source: The works of John Locke ...
“Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into.”
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“Try all things, hold fast that which is good.”
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education: (Including Of the Conduct of the Understanding)
“Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding; By John Locke ... Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political; by Francis Bacon
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it.”
Source: Two treatises of government
“The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.”
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education: And, Of the Conduct of the Understanding
“In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity.”
Source: The Locke Reader: Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary
“Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be us'd in the correction of children, and that only in the cases of extremity, after all gently ways have been try'd, and proved unsuccessful; which, if well observ'd, there will very seldom be any need of blows.”
“Knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.”
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education
“When I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reasonable thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world.”
Source: The Works of John Locke: In Nine Volumes
“Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.”
Source: Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding
“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.”
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“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.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding: With Sketches of the Lives of Locke and Bacon
“A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security.”
Source: The Second Treatise on Civil Government
“Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.”
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education
“Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces any thing for want of improvement.”
Source: An essay concerning human understanding ... The twentieth edition, etc
“The only thing we are naturally afraid of is pain, or loss of pleasure. And because these are not annexed to any shape, colour, or size of visible objects, we are frighted of none of them, till either we have felt pain from them, or have notions put into us that they will do us harm.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Locke (Illustrated)
“False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.”
“For it will be very difficult to persuade men of sense that he who with dry eyes and satisfaction of mind can deliver his brother to the executioner to be burnt alive, does sincerely and heartily concern himself to save that brother from the flames of hell in the world to come.”
Source: A Letter Concerning Toleration
“And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage.”
Source: Two treatises of government
“Men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political
“The difference, so observable in men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural faculties, as acquired habits.”
Source: Of human understanding. A defence of Mr. Locke's opinion concerning personal identity. Of the conduct of the understanding. Some thoughts concerning reading and study for a gentleman. Elements of natural philosophy. A new method of common-place-book
“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.”
“Children should from the beginning be bred up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting any living creature; and be taught not to spoil or destroy any thing, unless it be for the preservation or advantage of some other that is nobler.”
Source: The works of John Locke ...
“Whosoever is found variable, and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption: therefore, always, when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change.”
Source: The Conduct of the Understanding; By John Locke ... Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political; by Francis Bacon
“Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.”
Source: Locke, Berkely & Hume
“This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind , and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections:;; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.”
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education: And, Of the Conduct of the Understanding
“A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation.”
Source: Locke, Berkely and Hume
“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.”
“The first step to get this noble and manly steadiness, is... carefully keep children from frights of all kinds, when they are young. ...Instances of such who in a weak timorous mind, have borne, all their whole lives through, the effects of a fright when they were young, are every where to be seen, and therefore as much as may be to be prevented.”
Source: The works of John Locke ...
“The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.”
Source: The works of John Locke ...
“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.”
Source: Locke, Berkely & Hume
“The Indians , whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of John Locke (Illustrated)
“If you punish him for what he sees you practise yourself, he... will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself.”
Source: The works of John Locke ...
“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.”
“Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.”
Source: Locke, Berkely and Hume
“How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.”
Source: The works of John Locke ...
“How then shall they have the play-games you allow them, if none must be bought for them?" I answer, they should make them themselves, or at least endeavour it, and set themselves about it. ...And if you help them where they are at a stand, it will more endear you to them than any chargeable toys that you shall buy for them.”
Source: Some Thoughts Concerning Education
“Whoever has used what means he is capable of, for the informing of himself, with a readiness to believe and obey what shall be taught and prescribed by Jesus, his Lord and King, is a true and faithful subject of Christ s kingdom:;; and cannot be thought to fail in any thing necessary to salvation.”
Source: The Works of John Locke: The reasonableness of Christianity. A vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, from Mr. Edward's reflections. A second vindication
“These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.”
“That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.”
Source: The Works of John Locke: Some thoughts concerning education. An examination of P. Malebranche's opinion of seeing all things in God. A discourse of miracles. Memoirs relating to the life of Anthony, first earl of Shaftesbury. Some familiar letters between Mr. Locke and several of his friends
“When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success.”
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“With books we stand on the shoulders of giants.”
“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.”
Source: Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer
