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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Political theory5 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. — Grover Norquist · 2001The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community. — John Locke · 1690Man being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. — John Locke · 1690The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690Politics4 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community. — John Locke · 1690Man being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. — John Locke · 1690The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690Limited government2 quotes
My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. — Grover Norquist · 2001I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. — Grover Norquist · 2001Natural law2 quotes
Man...has by nature a power...to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate—against the injuries and attempts of other men. — John Locke · 1690The slave trade is contrary to the laws of God and to the rights of men. — David Hartley (the Younger) · 1776Physics2 quotes
I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars. — Arthur Eddington · 1926I am standing on the threshold about to enter a room. It is a complicated business. In the first place I must shove against an atmosphere pressing with a force of fourteen pounds on every square inch of my body. I must make sure of landing on a plank travelling at twenty miles a second round the sun-a fraction of a second too early or too late, the plank would be miles away. I must do this whilst hanging from a round planet, head outward into space, and with a wind of aether blowing at no one knows how many miles a second through every interstice of my body. — Arthur Eddington · 1928Property rights2 quotes
The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690Man...has by nature a power...to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate—against the injuries and attempts of other men. — John Locke · 1690Reason2 quotes
Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties. — John Locke · 1690There are very few lovers of truth for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. — John Locke · 1690Resistance to change2 quotes
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. — Walter Bagehot · 1872New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. — John Locke · 1690Aliens1 quote
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. — Arthur C. Clarke · 1951Atoms1 quote
I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars. — Arthur Eddington · 1926Beliefs1 quote
Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. — John Locke · 1690Big vs. small1 quote
I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars. — Arthur Eddington · 1926Character1 quote
There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true. — Henry Fielding · 1749Charity1 quote
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. — Walter Bagehot · 1872Conformity1 quote
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits. — Walter Bagehot · 1856Convictions1 quote
Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. — John Locke · 1690Corporal punishment1 quote
The Rod, which is the only Instrument of Government that Tutors generally know, or ever think of, is the most unfit of any to be us'd in Education. — John Locke · 1693Courage1 quote
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke · 1962Creation1 quote
Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690Custom and convention1 quote
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits. — Walter Bagehot · 1856Death1 quote
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible. — Henry Fielding · 1751Democracy1 quote
The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people. — Walter Bagehot · 1867Dying1 quote
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible. — Henry Fielding · 1751Efficiency of nature1 quote
Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690Epistemology1 quote
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?... Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience. — John Locke · 1690Erroneous beliefs1 quote
Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. — John Locke · 1690Evidence1 quote
There are very few lovers of truth for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. — John Locke · 1690Fathers and sons1 quote
He that will have his Son have a Respect for him and his Orders, must himself have a great Reverence for his Son. — John Locke · 1693Fear of death1 quote
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible. — Henry Fielding · 1751Finding one's limits1 quote
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke · 1962