Top 200 John Locke Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men’s opinions are superficial and confused.”

— John Locke

152. “The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.”

— John Locke

153. “In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.”

— John Locke

154. “To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”

— John Locke

155. “Though the water running in the fountain be every ones, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out?”

— John Locke

156. “The body of People may with Respect resist intolerable Tyranny.”

— John Locke

157. “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

158. “If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us farther than at first, perhaps, we should have imagined.”

— John Locke

159. “In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts.”

— John Locke

160. “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.”

— John Locke

161. “It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.”

— John Locke

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

— John Locke

163. “To give a man full knowledge of morality, I would send him to no other book than the New Testament.”

— John Locke

164. “We are all a sort of chameleons, that still take a tincture from things near us; nor is it to be wonder’d at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear.”

— John Locke

165. “He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it.”

— John Locke

166. “I pretend not to teach, but to inquire.”

— John Locke

167. “Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.”

— John Locke

168. “If the Gospel and the Apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity, and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.”

— John Locke

169. “God; I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion and to settle the just bounds that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.”

— John Locke

170. “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

171. “Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them.”

— John Locke

172. “Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.”

— John Locke

173. “Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as streight: and Men may be as positive and peremptory in Error as in Truth.”

— John Locke

174. “Curiosity should be as carefully cherish’d in children, as other appetites suppress’d.”

— John Locke

175. “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.”

— John Locke

176. “We are born to be, if we please, rational creatures, but it is use and exercise only that makes us so, and we are indeed so no farther than industry and application has carried us.”

— John Locke

177. “Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.”

— John Locke

178. “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.”

— John Locke

179. “Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.”

— John Locke

180. “If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him.”

— John Locke

181. “Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.”

— John Locke

182. “There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason.”

— John Locke

183. “The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate.”

— John Locke

184. “Nay, if we may openly speak the truth, and as becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.”

— John Locke

185. “There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.”

— John Locke

186. “In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity.”

— John Locke

187. “The Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics, had no claim to toleration.”

— John Locke

188. “The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.”

— John Locke

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

— John Locke

190. “He’s six-three, and so skinny my mom would say there’s more meat on a butcher’s apron.”

— John Locke

191. “Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural.”

— John Locke

192. “If punishment reaches not the mind and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.”

— John Locke

193. “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.”

— John Locke

194. “To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive; having ideas and perception being the same thing.”

— John Locke

195. “When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and ’twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.”

— John Locke

196. “Methinks Sir Robert should have carried his Monarchical Power one step higher and satisfied the World, that Princes might eat their Subjects too.”

— John Locke

197. “Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others; they do not guard them from the negligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves. No man can be forced to be rich or healthful, whether he will or no. Nay, God Himself will not save men against their wills.”

— John Locke

198. “There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd Doctrines, as to guard them round about with Legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefin’d Words.”

— John Locke

199. “When the sacredness of property is talked of, it should be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property.”

— John Locke

200. “Virtue is everywhere that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem is called virtue.”

— John Locke