Top 200 John Locke Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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.”

— John Locke

102. “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

— John Locke

103. “It is only practice that improves our minds as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from our understandings any farther than they are perfected by habits.”

— John Locke

104. “To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.”

— John Locke

105. “Let not men think there is no truth, but in the sciences that they study, or the books that they read.”

— John Locke

106. “Who hath a prospect of the different state of perfect happiness or misery that attends all men after this life, depending on their behavior, the measures of good and evil that govern his choice are mightily changed.”

— John Locke

107. “He that in the ordinary affairs of life would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration would be sure of nothing in this world but of perishing quickly.”

— John Locke

108. “But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.”

— John Locke

109. “What if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?”

— John Locke

110. “I think I may say, that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.”

— John Locke

111. “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

112. “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

113. “He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss.”

— John Locke

114. “It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.”

— John Locke

115. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”

— John Locke

116. “Try all things, hold fast that which is good.”

— John Locke

117. “No peace and security among mankind-let alone common friendship-can ever exist as long as people think that governments get their authority from God and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.”

— John Locke

118. “There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.”

— John Locke

119. “THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.”

— John Locke

120. “The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe.”

— John Locke

121. “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.”

— John Locke

122. “The law of faith then, in short, is for every one to believe what God requires him to believe, as a condition of the covenant he makes with him: and not to doubt of the performance of his promises.”

— John Locke

123. “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.”

— John Locke

124. “Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.”

— John Locke

125. “As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.”

— John Locke

126. “I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.”

— John Locke

127. “He that denies any of the doctrines that Christ has delivered, to be true, denies him to be sent from God, and consequently to be the Messiah; and so ceases to be a Christian.”

— John Locke

128. “The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.”

— John Locke

129. “Words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him who uses them.”

— John Locke

130. “The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them are simple and some complex.”

— John Locke

131. “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

132. “Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.”

— John Locke

133. “Children have as much mind to show that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please.”

— John Locke

134. “Every man must some time or other be trusted to himself.”

— John Locke

135. “The least and most imperceptible impressions received in our infancy have consequences very important and of long duration.”

— John Locke

136. “And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies nothing, but the effect, videlicet that water, that was before fluid, is become hard and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is done.”

— John Locke

137. “Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.”

— John Locke

138. “He that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation puts out the Light of both, as one who pokes out eye to see .”

— John Locke

139. “When we find out an Idea, by whose Intervention we discover the Connexion of two others, this is a Revelation from God to us, by the voice of Reason.”

— John Locke

140. “God is the place of spirits, as spaces are the places of bodies.”

— John Locke

141. “Habits wear more constantly and with greatest force than reason, which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed.”

— John Locke

142. “Children generally hate to be idle; all the care then is that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them.”

— John Locke

143. “Certain subjects yield a general power that may be applied in any direction and should be studied by all.”

— John Locke

144. “Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition, or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct.”

— John Locke

145. “Inuring children gently to suffer some degrees of pain without shrinking, is a way to gain firmness to their minds, and lay a foundation for courage and resolution in the future part of their lives.”

— John Locke

146. “It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.”

— John Locke

147. “Practice conquers the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule.”

— John Locke

148. “Action is the great business of mankind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant.”

— John Locke

149. “Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly learned, but may be little knowing.”

— John Locke

150. “Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.”

— John Locke