Quotes by John Locke

Logic is the anatomy of thought.

Every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has a right to but himself.

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

We are a kind of Chameleon, taking our hue - the hue of our moral character, from those who are about us.

He that will have his son have respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Now, I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of religion, whether they do it out of friendship and kindness towards them or no? I say, if all this be done merely to make men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer whoredom, fraud, malice and such-like enormities, which (according to the Apostle) manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predominate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people?

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

Our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive. As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. . . . I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain: can any of these be more evident to me than my own existence? . . . For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own existence, as of the existence of the pain I feel: or if I know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then convinces us, that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of certainty.

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