Date: 1698

"The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: May 16, 1699

"All others have a right to be followed as far as I, i.e. as far as the evidence of what they say convinces; and of that my own understanding alone must be judge for me, and nothing else."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1699

"I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil, applying the Latin word Spiritus, from whence Spirit is derived, to the Soul as a thinking Thing, without excluding Materiality out of it. To which your Lordship replies,*That Cicero, in his Tusculan Q...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: July 23, 1703

"Time, I daily find, blots out apace the little Stock of my Mind."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

Many men "blinded as they have been from the beginning, they never could think otherwise; at least without a vigour of mind able to contest the empire of habit"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

"Every one declares against blindness, and yet who almost is not fond of that which dims his sight, and keeps the clear light out of his mind, which should lead him into truth and knowledge?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

"There are so many ways of fallacy, such arts of giving colours, appearances and resemblances by this court-dresser, the fancy"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

In the association of ideas "unnatural connections become by custom as natural to the mind, as sun and light"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

"Matters that are recommended to our thoughts by any of our passions take possession of our minds with a kind of authority, and will not be kept out or dislodged, but, as if the passion that rules were, for the time, the sheriff of the place, and came with all the posse, the understanding is seiz...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

"There is scarce any body, I think, of so calm a temper who hath not sometime found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered under the inconvenience of it."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)