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.
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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.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
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.
Related Quotes
For thinking and Being are the same.
-- Parmenides
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
Imagine prisoners chained underground since childhood, seeing only shadows on a wall and taking them for reality.
-- Plato
I know that I know nothing.
-- Socrates
Color exists by convention, sweet by convention, bitter by convention; in reality there are only atoms and void.
-- Democritus
Those who understand that things arise dependently know them to be empty.
-- Nagarjuna