Philosophy: John Locke
Summary of Main Ideas / Empiricist Philosophy, John Locke Biography, Quotes, Pictures

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

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

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. …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. (John Locke)

Brief Biography of John Locke & Summary of his Main Ideas (1632 - 1704)

John Locke was a 17th-century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. An Englishman, Locke's notions of a "government with the consent of the governed" and man's natural rights - life, liberty, and estate (property) - had an enormous influence on the development of political philosophy.

His ideas formed the basis for the concepts used in American law and government, allowing the colonists to justify revolution. Locke's epistemology and philosophy of mind also had a significant influence well into the Enlightenment period.

Locke has been placed in a group called the British Empiricists, which includes David Hume and George Berkeley. Locke is perhaps most often contrasted with Thomas Hobbes.
In his main work, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" Locke critiques the philosophy of innate ideas and builds a theory of the mind and knowledge that gives priority to the senses and experience. His adherence to this doctrine is what marks him out as an empiricist philosopher rather than a rationalist such as his critic Leibniz.

The Essay sets out Locke's theory of ideas, including his distinction between passively acquired simple ideas, such as "red," "sweet," "round," etc., and actively built complex ideas, such as numbers, causes and effects, abstract ideas, ideas of substances, identity, and diversity. Locke also distinguishes between the truly existing primary qualities of bodies, like shape, motion and the arrangement of minute particles, and the secondary qualities that are "powers to produce various sensations in us" such as "red" and "sweet." These secondary qualities, Locke claims, are dependent on the primary qualities.

In 'Two Treatises of Government', Locke posits a state of nature as the proper starting point for examining politics. Individuals have rights, and their duties are defined in terms of protecting their own rights and respecting those of others. Through the law of nature, which Locke describes as "reason," we are able to understand why we must respect the natural rights of others (including the right to property for which one has labored). In practice, the law of nature is ignored and so government is necessary; this can be created only by the consent of the governed, which can be had only to a commonwealth of laws. A government betrays its trust when the laws are violated or when the trust of prerogative is abused. Once government is dissolved, the people are free to erect a new one and to oppose those who claim authority under the old one, i. e., to revolt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke

John Locke Quotes

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Who shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”

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.

Day-labourers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairymaids must be told what to believe: The greatest part cannot know and therefore they must believe.

The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. (John Locke)