Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? ... To this I answer, in one word, from experience.
Philosophers
John Locke
Born in 1632 in England, John Locke is known as the 'father of British empiricism' and the 'father of liberalism.' His tabula rasa epistemology — that the mind is a blank slate at birth — and his social-contract theory defending life, liberty, and property as inviolable natural rights formed the intellectual skeleton of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, laying the foundations of modern democracy and constitutional government.
View this figure's profile
John Locke's Other Quotes
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.
Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
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 ... he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
Related Quotes
You must learn all things: both the steadfast heart of well-rounded Truth and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true trust.
-- Parmenides
For thinking and Being are the same.
-- Parmenides
Those who understand that things arise dependently know them to be empty.
-- Nagarjuna
Knowing is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowing.
-- Wang Yangming
The world is my representation.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.
-- Averroes