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We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can easily be imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers, which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection.

John Locke

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John Locke
Age: 72 †
Born: 1632
Born: August 29
Died: 1704
Died: October 28
Philosopher
Physician
Politician
Writer
Wrington
Somerset
Born
Perfection
Imagined
Anything
Skills
Faculty
Capable
Skill
Giving
Exercise
Powers
Thing
Gives
Leads
Would
Least
Easily
Almost
Carry
Faculties
Ability
Towards
Farther

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If any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people by his own authority and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government.
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Who lies for you will lie against you.
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To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive having ideas and perception being the same thing.
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Men's happiness or misery is [for the] most part of their own making.
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Success in fighting means not coming at your opponent the way he wants to fight you.
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It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.
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All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.
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Children have as much mind to show that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please.
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[H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.
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Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.
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God is the place of spirits, as spaces are the places of bodies.
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Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.
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Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
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Certain subjects yield a general power that may be applied in any direction and should be studied by all.
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Who hath a prospect of the different state of perfect happiness or misery that attends all men after this life, depending on their behavior, the measures of good and evil that govern his choice are mightily changed.
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Memory is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which after imprinting have disappeared, or have been laid aside out of sight.
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With books we stand on the shoulders of giants.
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A man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty.
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This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.
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Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces any thing for want of improvement.
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