UPSC Express

John Locke

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

What worries you, masters you.

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

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

We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.

All wealth is the product of labor.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

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.

To love our neighbor as ourselves is such a truth for regulating human society, that by that alone one might determine all the cases in social morality.

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

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

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.