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John Locke

John Locke, a writer, philosopher, political theorist and activist and medical doctor and researcher, was one of the most influential figures in modern western civilization. His writings provided a good deal of the foundational thought from which later philosophers such as Emanuel Kant and Hume. His political ideas including “government with the consent of the governed” and the rights of life, liberty and property were a major influence on many of the founding fathers of the United States including Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Locke argued for government based on checks and balances and felt that protest and revolution was necessary to prevent and remedy tyranny. We can see the influence of Locke’s ideas on our own Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

One of John Locke’s concepts, which to us in western civilization societies many centuries later is a given, was not at all the case prior to Locke, and that is the concept of owning property as a result of one’s own labors. He stated that it is a natural right of humans to have the opportunity to own property as the result of working. Prior to, in the time of Locke and for many years thereafter, primarily those born into nobility and the church owned property, relegating working people to tenant status. Karl Marx of course was a harsh critic or Locke and argued against his view. Judging by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the substantial poverty of North Korea compared to South Korea and comparisons between mainland China and Taiwan, the verdict seems to be in as to which philosopher had the greater degree of wisdom.
 
His gravestone contains the following epitaph: “Near this place lies John Locke. If you ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar, he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. This you will learn from his writings, which will show you everything else concerning him, with greater truth, than the suspect praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to you. Let his vices be buried with him. Of good life, you have an example in the gospel, should you desire it; of vice, would there were none for you; of mortality, surely you have one here and everywhere, and may you learn from it. That he was born on the 29th of August in the year of our Lord 1632, and that he died on the 28th of October in the year of our Lord 1704, this tablet, which itself will soon perish, is a record.”

“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”

“All wealth is the product of labor.”

“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.”

“We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”

“What worries you, masters you.”

“It is easier for a tutor to command than to teach.”

“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.”

          

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

“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.”

“The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have”

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

“Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses.”

“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.”

“Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.”

“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.”

- John Locke (1632 - 1704)

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John Locke, a physician and philosopher whose writings significantly influenced the founding fathers of the United States, states a truth which many agree with, and few refrain from acting upon as he described.

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

- John Locke (1632-1704)

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