“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
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Author detail
John Locke, widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.<sup>[1][1]</sup> [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
Quotes
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“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
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“A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.”
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“God, when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man.”
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“All wealth is the product of labor”
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“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”
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“For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or...”
“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.”
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“It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.”
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“The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”
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“the UNDERSTANDING— who does not know that, as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the other. Its searches afte...”
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“I think I may say, that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education”
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“The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”
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“Any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight, which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the idea we call love.”
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“All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”
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“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.”
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“I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar pro...”
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“The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all p...”
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“The discipline of desire is the background of character.”
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“An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.”
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“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
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