John Locke

"Popery so threatens and so nearly surrounds us...every sober man would think it seasonable at this time that all dissenting Protestants should be brought to a good understanding and compliance one with another...I think all Protestants ought now by all ways to be stirred up against them [Catholics] as People that have declared themselves ready by blood, violence, and destruction to ruine our Religion and Government...[they] are nothing but either Enemys in our bowells or spies among us, whilst their General commanders whom they blindly obey declare warr, and an unalterable designe to destroy us."

"For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven."

"[I am] lover of his king and country, a lover of peace and the protestant interest...[Consent] is absolutely necessary to the very being and subsistance of our government and without which our peace and religion cannot possibly be any way secured...the miscarriages of the former reigns gave a rise and a right to King William's comeing and ushered him into the throne...Let us owne King William to be our King by right...[William came] to recover our oppressed and sinkeing laws, libertys, and Religion...They who would not betray England and expose it to popish rage and revenge, who have any regard to their country, their religion, their consciences, and their estates, must maintain the bulwarke have set up against it, and which alone preserves us against a more violent inundation of all sorts of misery than that we were soe lately delivered from."

"This life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life."

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

"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."

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

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

"Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment."

"The boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men."

"Since sounds have no natural connection with our ideas ... the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification ... has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than another to signify any idea."

"He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood."

"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."

"He that knows anything, knows this, in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance.""

"False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera."

"Truth gives a short answer, lies go round about. (Strauss, 1994 p. 221)"

"Jeder Schritt vorwärts, den der Geist auf seinem Wege zur Erkenntnis tut, bringt irgendeine Entdeckung, die nicht nur neu, sondern, im Augenblick wenigstens, auch die wertvollste ist."

"Die natürliche Freiheit des Menschen bedeutet, dass er frei ist von jeder höheren Gewalt auf Erden und nicht dem Willen oder der gesetzgebenden Gewalt eines Menschen untersteht, sondern allein das Gesetz der Natur zu seinem Rechtsgrundsatz erhebt."

""Die Arbeit seines Körpers und das Werk seiner Hände, so können wir sagen, sind im eigentlichen Sinne sein. Was immer er also jenem Zustand entrückt, den die Natur vorgesehen und in dem sie es belassen hat, hat er mit seiner Arbeit gemischt und hat ihm etwas hinzugefügt, was sein eigen ist"

""Wir würden viel weniger Streit in der Welt haben, nähme man die Worte für das, was sie sind"

"Was unser Denken begreifen kann, ist kaum ein Punkt, fast gar nichts im Verhältnis zu dem, was es nicht begreifen kann."

"Nichts ist im Verstand, was nicht vorher in den Sinnen gewesen wäre."

"Keines Menschen Kenntnis kann über seine Erfahrung hinausgehen."

"Glück und Unglück sind zwei Zustände, deren äußerste Grenzen wir nicht kennen."

"Arbeit um der Arbeit willen ist gegen die Natur."

"Nichts macht einen zarteren und tieferen Eindruck auf den Geist des Menschen als das Beispiel."

"Die größte Kunst ist, den Kleinen alles, was sie tun oder lernen sollen, zum Spiel und Zeitvertreib zu machen."