John Locke

“The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.”

“Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.”

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

“The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.”

“I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.”

“Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.”

“The discipline of desire is the background of character.”

“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.”

“As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.”

“Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip.”

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

“...but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw form it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it)...”

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

“Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.”

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

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

“So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.”