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John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the 'Father of Liberalism'.
To demand that men should constantly use words in the same sense [...] would be to imagine that all men should have the same notions, and speak only of things of which they have clear and distinct ideas.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
One must have very little knowledge of the world to believe that a great volubility of tongue is found only as a consequence of good judgment...
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Whoever considers the errors, the confusion [...] and the darkness that the misuse of Words has spread in the World, will find some reason to doubt whether Language [...] has contributed more to advance or to interrupt the knowledge of Truth.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
He who uses words without giving them a clear and determined meaning does nothing but deceive himself and lead others into error; and whoever does so deliberately must be regarded as an enemy of Truth and Knowledge.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If the speaker and the listener do not agree on the ideas signified by the words they use, the reasoning is not about Things, but about words.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Everyone should take care to use no word without meaning, nor any name to which he has not attached some idea.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Morality is capable of demonstration as well as Mathematics, since one can know perfectly [...] the real essence of the things that moral terms signify.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is great negligence or extreme malice to discourse on moral things in a vague and obscure manner.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Since the Mind has no other Object of its thoughts [...] than its own Ideas [...], it is evident that our Knowledge is concerned only with our Ideas.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Knowledge is nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or opposition and disagreement, that is found between any of our Ideas.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
An Understanding as limited as ours, being capable of thinking [...] of only one thing at a time, if men knew only what is the actual object of their thoughts, they would all be extremely ignorant.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
This kind of [intuitive] Knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is capable of.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Our knowledge can never embrace all that we may desire to know about the ideas we have, nor remove all the difficulties and resolve all the Questions that can be asked about any of these Ideas.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We have ideas of Matter and of Thinking; but perhaps we shall never be able to know whether any mere material Being thinks or not.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Whoever asks for a greater certainty than that, knows not what he asks, and only shows that he has a mind to be a Sceptic, without being able to be so.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The idea of that collection of men which makes up an Army, is as much a single idea as that of a man.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
This great collective idea of all Bodies designated by the term Universe is as much a single idea as that of the smallest particle of Matter in the World.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
For an idea to be unique, it is sufficient that it be considered as a single image, although it may be composed of the greatest number of particular Ideas.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Mind forms these collective Ideas of Substances by the Power it has to variously compose and unite Ideas [...] into a single idea.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
By joining together various particular Substances, [the Mind] forms collective ideas of Substances, such as a Troop, an Army, a Swarm, a City, a Fleet.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is no more difficult to conceive how an Army of ten thousand men can make a single idea.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is as easy for the Mind to unite the idea of a great number of men into a single idea [...] as to form a singular idea from all the distinct ideas that enter into the composition of a man.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We must count among these sorts of Collective Ideas, the greater part of artificial Things.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Upon due consideration of all these collective Ideas, [...] they are but artificial representations that the Mind draws.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Mind draws [these representations] in order to better contemplate them, and to discourse more conveniently about them when they are thus united under a single conception.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Mind [...] assembles under a single point of view things that are very distant, and independent of one another.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
For there is nothing so remote or so contrary that the Mind cannot bring together into a single idea by means of this Faculty.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The word Universe [...] carries but a single idea, however composite it may be.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Political societies have been founded on nothing other than the consent of the people.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Conquests are as far from being the origin and foundation of states, as the demolition of a house is from being the true cause of building another in the same place.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
It is [...] certain that without the consent of the people, no new form of government can ever be established.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The injury is the same, the crime is equal, whether it is committed by a man wearing a crown, or by a man of naught.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Great thieves punish the small ones to keep people in obedience; and [...] are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too powerful [...] for the weak hands of justice.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
A victorious people does not become enslaved by conquest, and is not covered with laurels to show that it is destined for sacrifice on its general's day of triumph.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The people, having not given their leaders the power to do anything unjust, [...] must not be charged and regarded as guilty of the violence [...] in an unjust war.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
It is [...] the unjust use of violence that puts a man in a state of war with another; and thereby, the one who is guilty of it forfeits his right to life.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
A father's faults are not his children's faults [...]. A father, by his misconduct, [...] may forfeit the right to his own life; but his children must not be implicated in his crimes.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Promises extorted, [...] wrested by force and without right, [...] are in no way binding.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Everyone is born with two kinds of rights. The first is the right over one's own person, of which one alone can dispose. The second is the right one has [...] to inherit the property of one's brothers or father.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
By the first of these rights, one is naturally subject to no government, even if born in a place where one is established.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The people [...] always have the right to shake off the yoke, and to free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny that the sword and violence have introduced [...].
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The nature of property consists in possessing something in such a way that no one can legitimately take anything from it without the owner's consent.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
No power can ever exempt from the observance of these eternal laws. The obligation they impose is so great and so strong that the Almighty Himself cannot dispense with it.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
One can make, in words, demonstrations and indubitable Propositions, without thereby advancing in the least in the knowledge of the truth of things.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
By this means [man] no more increases his knowledge than he increases his riches who, taking a bag of counters [...] names one a Crown, another a Pound [...] without however being richer by a mite.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Most writers [...] use words in a vague and uncertain manner [...] to cover their ignorance or their obstinacy under the obscurity and confusion of terms.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Wherever the idea that a word signifies is not distinctly known [...] our thoughts are solely attached to sounds, and contain neither real truth nor falsehood.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The universal Propositions of which we can have certain knowledge of their truth or falsehood do not relate to existence.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We have a knowledge of our own existence by Intuition, of the existence of God by Demonstration, and of other Things by Sensation.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If I doubt all other things, that very doubt convinces me of my own existence, and does not permit me to doubt it.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Pure Nothing can no more produce a real Being than the same Nothing can be equal to two right angles.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is as impossible for a thing absolutely destitute of Knowledge [...] to produce an intelligent Being, as it is impossible for a Triangle to make for itself three angles that are greater than two Right ones.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To limit what God can do to what we can understand is to give an infinite scope to our comprehension, or to make God Himself finite.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To have the idea of a thing in our Mind no more proves the existence of that thing than the Portrait of a man demonstrates his existence in the World [...].
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
He who in the ordinary affairs of life would admit nothing that was not founded on clear and direct demonstrations could be sure of nothing but perishing in a very short time.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Morality is the proper Science and the great business of men in general, who are interested in seeking the sovereign Good [...].
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We must guard against Hypotheses and false principles.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is not dependent on [our] Will to see as black what appears yellow, nor to persuade oneself that what is currently scalding is cold.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[The state of Nature] is a state of perfect freedom, [...] without depending upon the will of any other man, they may do as they please [...] provided they keep within the bounds of the law of Nature.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[The state of Nature] is also a state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
My desire to be loved [...] by my equals in the state of nature, imposes on me a natural obligation to bear them a like affection.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Though the state of nature be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Reason, which is that law [of nature], teaches all mankind [...] that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker, [...] His workmanship they are, made to last during His pleasure, not one another's.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Everyone is therefore bound to preserve himself [...]. And when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
When someone violates the law of nature, he thereby declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason [...] and so he becomes dangerous to mankind.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
This power [to punish] is not absolute and arbitrary [...], it is to inflict on him the penalties that calm reason and pure conscience naturally dictate and ordain, penalties proportionate to his fault.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The laws of nature [...] are as intelligible and as clear to a rational creature [...] as the positive laws of societies and states can be; and even [...] clearer and more evident.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
I do not hesitate to admit that Civil Government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
I wish that those who make this objection remember that absolute Monarchs are but men.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Is it not a Government where one man, commanding a multitude, is judge in his own cause, and may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases?
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
It is not every kind of agreement that puts an end to the state of nature, but only that by which one voluntarily enters into a society and forms a political body.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Sincerity and faithfulness are things that men are obliged to observe [...], as men, not as members of the same society.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Whoever will not eat until he has demonstratively seen that such food will nourish him [...] will have little else to do but to remain at rest and perish in a short time.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
God [...] has furnished us, with regard to most things that concern our own interests, with only an obscure light and a mere twilight of probability.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Faculty which God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain Knowledge [...] is Judgment, whereby the Mind supposes its Ideas to agree or disagree [...] without perceiving a demonstrative evidence.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Probability is the likeliness of a thing to be true. [...] The way the Mind receives such propositions is what we call belief, assent, or opinion.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] the opinion of others; though there is nothing more dangerous, nor more apt to lead us into error [...]. If the sentiments of others are a legitimate ground for assent, men will have reason to be Pagans in Japan, Mahometans in Turkey [...].
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Generally, those who have least examined their own opinions are the most vehement and the most attached to their own sense.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The necessity we are under of believing without knowledge [...] should make us more careful to inform ourselves, than to constrain others to receive our sentiments.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Where is the man who has indisputable proofs of the truth of all he maintains, or of the falsity of all he condemns?
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It would [...] be a becoming thing for men to live in peace and practice the common duties of humanity and friendship amidst that diversity of opinions which divides them.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Though Man may often fall into Error, he can acknowledge no other guide than Reason, nor blindly submit to the will and decisions of others.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The course we should take would be to pity our mutual ignorance, and endeavor to dissipate it by all gentle and fair ways to enlighten the mind.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
A testimony has less force and authority, the more distant it is from the original truth. [...] as a tradition passes successively through more hands, it has ever the less strength and evidence.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Analogy is the only help we have in these matters [beyond our senses]; and it is from there alone that we draw all our grounds of probability.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
God has not been so ungenerous with His favors to men that, being content to make them two-legged creatures, He left it to Aristotle to make them rational creatures.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The highest degree of our knowledge is intuition, without reasoning.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The great and unfortunate errors [...] on the matter of government, have arisen [...] from the fact that these different powers have been confounded.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Paternal power [...] is nothing other than the power that fathers and mothers have over their children, to govern them in a way that is useful and advantageous.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The affection and tenderness which God has placed in the hearts of fathers and mothers for their children shows [...] that he did not intend their power to be a severe power.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The power [...] of parents is [...] a natural government; but it in no way extends to the rights, ends, and jurisdiction of [...] political power.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Political power is that power which every man has in the state of nature, which has been united in the hands of a society, and which that society has given to rulers.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
This power shall be employed for the good of the body politic, and for the preservation of that which is the property of its members.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The end [...] of this power [...] must have no other end or purpose than the preservation of the members of society [...] their lives, their liberties, and their possessions.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
This power cannot legitimately be an absolute and arbitrary power with regard to their lives and their property.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Political power derives its origin from the convention and mutual consent of those who have joined together to form a society.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Despotic power is an absolute and arbitrary power that one man has over another, which he can use to take away his life whenever he pleases.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Nature cannot grant it [despotic power], since it has made no distinction between one person and another.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
No one having such a power over his own life, no one could communicate it and give it to another.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
A voluntary agreement gives [...] political power, to rulers and Princes, for the benefit of their subjects, so that these subjects may possess their own property in safety.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
As soon as an agreement is reached, [...] slavery, absolute power, and the state of war come to an end.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Absolute dominion is so far from being a form of civil society that it is no less incompatible with civil society than slavery is with property.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
To think often, and not to retain for a single moment the memory of what one thinks, is to think in a very useless manner.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Soul in that state is but [...] above the condition of a Mirror which, constantly receiving diverse Images or ideas, retains none of them.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If the Soul does not remember its own thoughts [...] of what use is it to it to think?
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Nature does nothing in vain, or for inconsiderable ends.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The dreams of a sleeping man are composed, in my opinion, only of the ideas that this man has had while awake, although for the most part strangely joined together.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To suppose that the Soul thinks and that the Man is not aware of it, is [...] to make two persons out of a single man.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The knowledge of Man cannot extend beyond his own experience.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] It is without doubt a similar affectation of wanting to know more than we can understand that makes so much noise and causes so many vain disputes in the World.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
All these sublime thoughts which rise above the clouds and penetrate even to the Heavens, draw their origin from thence: [...] the Soul [...] does not go beyond the Ideas that Sensation or Reflection present to it.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The empire that Man has over this small World, I mean over his own Understanding, is the same as that which he exercises in this great World of visible Beings.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Pleasure and Pain are two Ideas, one or the other of which is joined to almost all our Ideas, both those that come to us by sensation and those that we receive by reflection.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Take away the feeling we have of these qualities [...] and thenceforth all Colors, all Tastes, all Smells, and all Sounds [...] will vanish and cease to exist.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Perception is the first Faculty of the Soul that is occupied with our Ideas. It is also the first and simplest idea that we receive by means of Reflection.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] the Ideas that come by way of Sensation are often altered by Judgment in the minds of grown persons, without their perceiving it.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
This Faculty of perceiving is, it seems to me, what distinguishes Animals from Beings of a lower species.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Each one must bear the penalty for his own crime, and a man should not be made odious or suspect for the fault another has committed.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
Let the seditious, murderers, brigands be punished rigorously, [...] but let those whose doctrine is peaceful, and whose morals are chaste and innocent, be spared.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
[...] one should not exclude from civil society Pagans, nor Mohammedans, nor Jews, because of the religion they profess.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
What! You would allow a pagan to trade with you, and you would prevent him from praying to God and honoring him in his own way!
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
It is not the diversity of opinions, which one cannot prevent, but the refusal of tolerance, which one could grant, that has been the source of all the wars [...] on the matter of religion.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
Where are the men who suffer with patience to be stripped of the goods they have acquired by their industry [...] for a matter of conscience, which is accountable only to God.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
Is it not natural that, weary of all the evils [...], they should at last persuade themselves that it is lawful for them to repel force with force, and to take up arms for the defense of their rights.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
if each [Church and State] kept within its own proper bounds, there would not be the least occasion for trouble and discord...
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
May God grant that civil magistrates take more care to conform to [the Gospel], than to bind the consciences of others by human laws...
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
Heresy is a separation [...] among men who profess the same religion, because of certain dogmas that are not contained in their rule.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
he alone deserves this title [of heretic] who, because of such dogmas, tears the body of the Church, introduces [...] marks of distinction, and voluntarily separates himself from others.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
if you impose [your beliefs] on those who do not find them conformable [...], you yourself are a heretic, if for dogmas that cannot be fundamental, you cause a separation.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
I cannot but admire the audacity and recklessness of those persons who believe they can express the dogmas necessary for salvation more clearly than the Holy Spirit itself.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
Schism [...] is nothing other than a separation made in the communion of the Church for some rite that is not of absolute necessity in divine worship or ecclesiastical discipline.
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
he who denies nothing of what is contained in express terms in [the holy text], and who does not abandon any Church on that account, cannot be a schismatic or a heretic...
1686
Source: Letter Concerning Toleration
If we consult reason or revelation, we shall find that fathers and mothers have an equal right and power.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Although [...] all men are equal, [...] age or virtue may give some superiority. [...] However, all this agrees very well with that equality in respect to the dominion of one over another.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
I confess, children are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. [...] Their parents have a sort of rule over them [...] but it is only temporary.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain freedom, but to preserve and enlarge it.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Where there is no law, there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
True liberty is to have the freedom to dispose of one's person, actions, and possessions [...] according to the laws one lives under.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
God having given man an understanding to direct his actions, has also granted him a freedom of will and liberty of acting.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
When he has reached the state that made his father a free man, the son becomes a free man also.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; though we do not actually exercise either at first. Age that brings one, brings the other with it.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The freedom of man [...] is founded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in the law he is to govern himself by.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
It is one thing to owe honour, respect, help, and gratitude; it is another to be obliged to an absolute obedience and submission.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The power to command ends with minority: and [...] all this does not put the sceptre into a father's hands.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Children, being by nature as free as their father, [...] may, while in that freedom, choose what society they please.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
We must recognize that these two powers, the political and the paternal, are truly distinct and separate, are built upon different foundations, and have different ends.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The simple act of begetting gives a man a very slender power over his children; if his care went no further [...], this foundation would amount to very little.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Men, [...] being all naturally free, equal, and independent, no one can be removed from this state and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
When a certain number of people have agreed [...] to form a community [...], they make up a single political body, in which the majority has the right to decide and to act.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[The body politic] must necessarily move in the direction where the greatest force pushes and carries it, which is the consent of the majority.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Each individual, by agreeing with others to make one body politic [...], puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
What gave birth to a political society [...] is nothing other than the consent of a certain number of free men [...]; and it is this, and this only, that can have given a beginning to any legitimate government in the world.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
All political societies began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men acting freely in their choice of governors and forms of government.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The beginning of political society depends on the consent of the individuals, [...] so that all who enter it may establish the form of government they see fit.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
When ambition [...] sought to retain and increase power, without caring to consider for what end it had been committed, it was thought necessary to examine [...] the origin and rights of government.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[One must] find ways to repress the excesses and prevent the abuses of that power, which had been entrusted to others for one's own good, and yet was seen to be used only to do harm.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[...] it had never entered their minds that monarchy was jure divino, by divine right; nothing of the sort had ever been heard of until this great mystery was revealed by the theology of recent centuries.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
If the argument [that all men are born under a government] is correct, I ask, how did the monarchies in the world become legitimate?
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
A man [...] cannot, by any compact, bind his children or his posterity. For a son, when he is of age, being as free as his father ever was, no act of the father can [...] take away the son's liberty.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
A child is not born a subject of any country or government. He remains under the tuition and authority of his father until he has reached the age of discretion; then he is a free man.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Submitting to the laws of a country [...] does not make a man a member of the society established there: it is but a local protection and a local homage [...].
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Nothing can make a man a member of a society but his actual entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The Will [...] is determined in us by what I call uneasiness.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Wherever there is uneasiness, there is desire, for we incessantly desire happiness.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The most pressing uneasiness naturally determines the Will.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
All men desire happiness. If one asks [...] what it is that excites desire, I answer that it is Happiness, and nothing else.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Happiness taken in its full extent is the greatest pleasure of which we are capable [...].
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We call Good, all that is apt to produce Pleasure, and [...] Evil, what is apt to produce in us Pain.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
All Good, even that which is seen and acknowledged to be so, does not necessarily move every particular man's desire.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Soul having the power to suspend the fulfillment of any of its desires [...] Herein consists the Liberty of Man.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To be determined by one's own judgment is not something that destroys Liberty. [...] it is what makes for its usefulness and perfection.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The care we ought to have, not to take for real happiness one which is but imaginary, is the necessary foundation of our Liberty.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Soul has different Tastes as well as the Palate; and [...] to pretend to make all Men love glory or riches [...] [is] as useless as [...] wanting to satisfy the taste of all men by giving them cheese or oysters.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is impossible that anyone could voluntarily make his condition miserable [...] if he were not prompted to it by a false Judgment.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
When we compare [...] a future Pleasure or Pain [...] we often make false Judgments, in that we measure these pleasures and pains by the different distance at which they are from us.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Men can and should correct their palate, and acquire a taste for things that do not suit it [...].
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To prefer Vice to Virtue is visibly to judge wrongly.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The legislative power is that which has a right to direct how the force of the commonwealth shall be employed for preserving the community and the members of it.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
It might be too great a temptation to human frailty [...] for the same persons who have the power of making laws to have also in their hands the power to execute them.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[Lawmakers] might be tempted to propose [...] only their own advantage, and to have distinct and separate interests from the rest of the community.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
In well-ordered commonwealths, where the public good is considered as it ought to be, the legislative power is put into the hands of various persons.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[Lawmakers], after they have made [the laws] and separated, are themselves subject to them; which is a [...] strong motive to make them create laws only for the public good.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Because the laws [...] have a constant and lasting virtue, [...] it is necessary there should be a power always in being which should see to the execution of them.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
And thus the legislative and executive power come often to be separated.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
An injury done to a member of a political body engages the whole body to demand reparation.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Every community is one body that is in the state of nature in relation to all other states.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
Upon this principle is founded the right of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions, with all communities and states.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
These two powers, executive and federative, though they be really distinct in themselves, [...] yet they are almost always united.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[The federative power] must be left to the prudence and wisdom of those that have it, to be managed for the public good.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
The laws that concern subjects one amongst another [...] ought to precede their actions: but what is to be done in reference to foreigners, on whose actions one cannot rely?
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
If the executive and federative power be placed in persons that may act separately, the force of the public would be under different commands.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
[The separation of executive and federative powers] could only bring, sooner or later, misfortune and ruin to a state.
1690
Source: Treatise on Civil Government (Mazel translation)
In all these inquiries our Knowledge hardly extends beyond our experience.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] the greatest probability never amounts to certainty, without which there can be no true Knowledge.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If we are so little instructed about the Powers & Operations of Bodies, [...] we are in greater darkness with regard to Spirits.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Morality is capable of Demonstration.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
There can be no injustice where there is no property.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
How shall the Mind, which perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is evident that the Mind does not know things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Truth [...] means nothing other than the joining or separating of signs, according as the Things themselves agree or disagree with one another.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Whoever knows anything, knows above all things that he need not look far for examples of his Ignorance.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] to say or to think that there are no such faculties [other than our own] [...] is to reason as justly as a Blind man who would maintain that there is neither Sight nor Colors.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The Intellectual World and the Material World are [...] similar in this point, That the part we see [...] has no proportion to what we do not see.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] I do not doubt at all that one can deduce, from self-evident Propositions [...] the true measures of Right and Wrong by consequences [...] as incontestable as those used in Mathematics.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is impossible for men ever to search accurately for [...] the agreement [...] of Ideas, while their thoughts only roll [...] upon sounds of doubtful and uncertain meaning.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
[...] nothing being so pleasing to the Eye as Truth is to the Mind, nothing being so deformed, nor so incompatible with the Understanding as a Lie.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To attain Knowledge and certainty, it is necessary that we have determined ideas, and to make our Knowledge real, our Ideas must correspond to their Archetypes.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The great business of mankind consists in action, and it is to action that all that is the subject of laws relates.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The notion we have of pure substance in general [...] is none other than that of a 'we know not what' which is entirely unknown to us, supposed to be the support of the qualities we perceive.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Not having a notion of spiritual substance no more authorizes us to deny the existence of spirits, than to deny for the same reason the existence of bodies.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If we had senses sharp enough to discern the small particles of bodies, [...] the yellow color of gold would disappear, and we would instead see an admirable texture of parts.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Our senses, our faculties, and our organs are so arranged that they may serve us for the necessities of this life, and for what we have to do in this world.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It does not seem that we were made to have a perfect, clear, and absolute knowledge of things; [...] that is perhaps well beyond the reach of any finite being.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We cannot imagine other faculties than those we find in ourselves, as it is impossible to extend our conjectures beyond the ideas that come from sensation and reflection.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If someone says they do not know how they think, one can reply that they also do not know how they are extended, nor how the solid parts of their body are united to make a whole.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The communication of motion by impulse is, I believe, as obscure and inconceivable as the manner in which our mind moves our body by thought.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
As soon as the mind wants to go beyond the ideas of sensation and reflection to penetrate their causes, this inquiry only serves to make us feel how short our lights are.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
There is no more contradiction in thought existing without solidity, than in solidity existing without thought.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We form our idea of God by extending to infinity the ideas of knowledge, power, etc., that we find in ourselves through reflection.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The ideas of relation, such as that of 'father', are often clearer and more distinct than the ideas of the substances to which they belong, such as that of 'man'.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Since two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same time in the same place, whatever exists anywhere excludes every other thing of the same kind.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We call 'cause' that which produces an idea or a substance, and 'effect' that which is produced.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Nothing reveals the Principles of men better than their actions.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Following the opinions of other men is a great source of error.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The misuse of Words is a great obstacle to Knowledge.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
To believe without reason is to act against one's duty.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The most skilled people are the least decisive.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Defining words would end a great many Disputes.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Faith cannot convince us of anything contrary to our Reason.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Our Ignorance infinitely surpasses our Knowledge.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Logic has introduced obscurity into Language, and has halted the progress of Knowledge.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Morality is the true study of humankind.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Those who have examined things the least are the most obstinate.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Principles must not be accepted without severe examination.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Rhetoric is the Art of deceiving men.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Syllogism is of no help for reasoning.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Tolerance is necessary given the state of our Knowledge.
1689
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding