12 John Locke Quotes

If Thomas Jefferson birthed the American nation by penning his immortal words in the Declaration of Independence, John Locke (1632-1704() can surely be called the grandfather of American freedom. Jefferson and many of the other American Founding Fathers found in the words of Locke, the justification they needed for an unheard of revolution by a colony against its mother nation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Jefferson wrote, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This was pure John Locke. Locke argued that rights flowed not from monarch’s as had been accepted in Europe for centuries, but from nature. In other words, rights and freedoms were granted to individuals by virtue of their birth and not by any earthly power.

Here are some of Locke’s own quotes. They inspire a now-familiar, but then radical, view of human freedom. There are even a few wise and motivational quotes mixed in.

1. All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

2. Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.

3. What worries you, masters you.

4. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

5. New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common.

6. To prejudge other men’s notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.

7. There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.

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

9. 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.

10. A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.

11. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

12. It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.