Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
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
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.
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.
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
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.
-- John Locke
The legal subordination of one sex to another is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.
-- John Stuart Mill
Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world.
-- René Descartes
Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.
-- Thomas Aquinas