1690

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding · 1690

★ 5.5

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

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.

Second Treatise of Civil Government · 1690

★ 5.5

Philosophical literature

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding · 1690

★ 4.5

Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 3.9

Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 3.8

The 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.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 3.7

Man 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.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 3.7

The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 3.7

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

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.1

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

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.1

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.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 2.1

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.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.0

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.