John Locke
John Locke (1632 CE–1704 CE) was an English philosopher and physician who pioneered modern empiricism and political liberalism through his landmark texts Two Treatises of Government and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. By rejecting the divine right of kings, Locke argued that political authority is legitimate only if it protects the inherent natural rights of life, liberty, and property, while his epistemological work conceptualized the human mind as a tabula rasa shaped entirely by experience.
Quotes
- No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
- The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone.
- Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper,…
- The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which…
- Government has no other end but the preservation of…
- Where there is no law, there is no freedom.
- The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to…
- New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed,…
- Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of…
- Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company,…
- Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they…
- As the state of health is what everyone desires, so it is a…