John Locke 1632-1704

[John Locke was the Father of Liberalism! He professed open-mindedness, equal rights, honesty, education, and Democracy.]

His writings “influenced the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence.” Wikipedia

“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
[This thought is profound! It had a major influence on the American founders' understanding of, and love for: “freedom!” The “end” of law means the “ultimate purpose” of law.]

“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.”
[All significant self improvement starts with acceptance of a fact that tells you that you have got to change.]

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

“There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.”

“The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.”

“There is reason to think, that, if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others.”

All wealth is the product of labor:
“Though the earth, and all inferiour creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.”

“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.”
[Worse yet, loose words can mask sloppy thoughts. “Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them.” Thomas Jefferson]

“False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth.”

“Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.”

“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.”

“Force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force.”

“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.”

“Curiosity should be as carefully cherish'd in children, as other appetites suppress'd.”

“Lying... is so ill a quality, and the mother of so many ill ones that spawn from it, and take shelter under it, that a child should be brought up in the greatest abhorrence of it imaginable.”

“There are very few lovers of truth, for truth's sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so.”

“He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it.”
[If there is an Almighty Creator then every fact is “Sacred Revelation.”]

“Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.”