Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"It is impossible that Men should ever truly seek, or certainly discover the Agreement or Disagreement of Ideas themselves, whilst their Thoughts flutter about, or stick only in Sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations Mathematicians abstracting their Thoughts from Names, and accustoming t...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Whereby the increase brought into the Stock of real Knowledge has been very little, in proportion to the Schools, Disputes, and Writings, the World has been fill'd with; whilst Men, being lost in the great Wood of Words, knew not whereabout they were, how far their Discoveries were advanced, or ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

" But 'tis chiefly by the finding out those Ideas that shew the connexion of distant ones, that our stock of Knowledge is increased, and that useful Arts and Sciences are advanced."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Syllogism, at best, is but the Art of fencing with the little Knowledge we have, without making any Addition to it: And if a Man should employ his Reason all this way, he will not doe much otherwise than he, who having got some Iron out of the Bowels of the Earth, should have it beaten up all in...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Had the King of Spain imploy'd the Hands of his People, and his Spanish Iron so, he had brought to Light but little of that Treasure, that lay so long hid in the dark Entrails of America. And I am apt to think, that he who shall employ all the force of his Reason only ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Though therefore it be the Mind that makes the Collection, 'tis the Name which is, as it were, the Knot, that ties them fast together."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

Internal and external sensation, "These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room: For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or i...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And if these Organs, or the Nerves which are the Conduits, to convey them from without to their Audience in the Brain, the mind's Presence-room (as I may so call it) are any of them so disordered, as not to perform their Functions, they have no Postern to be admitted by; no other way to bring th...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"In all these cases, Ideas in the Mind, quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the Understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining Characters of themselves, than Shadows do flying over fields of Corn; and the Mind is as void of them, as if they never had been there."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)