Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature; these are the spur and reins whereby al mankind are set on work, and guided.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
- Topic: Education, Learning, Thinking
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from John Locke
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary rule of another man.
Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
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There is no education like adversity.
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.
A student is not a container you have to fill, but a torch you have to light up.
Educate the children and it won’t be necessary to punish the men.
If you want a new idea, read an old book.
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Read, read, read. Never stop reading. And when you can't read anymore… write.
The most crucial use of knowledge and education is to understand the importance of developing a good heart.
Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.
What signifies knowing the names, if you know not the nature of things?
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature; it is our future that lays down the law of our today.
If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
In school, you are given the lesson first. One the street, you're given the mistake first and then it's up to you to find the lesson, if you ever find it.
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
You don’t have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production.
One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right when the head is totally wrong.
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
