💬 Quotes

"Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a 'property' in his own 'person': this nobody has any right to but himself. The 'labour' of his body, and the 'work' of his hands, we may say, are properly his."

"Freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary will of another man."

"Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience."

"Absolute arbitrary power, or governing without settled laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government."

"During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man."

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them with."

"In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation... no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

"Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all."

"The Passions that incline men to Peace, are: Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their industry to obtain them."

"A Commonwealth is one Person, whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defence."

"To the Greek, striving for the middle life, the ideal is not 'Be perfect,' but 'Be temperate.'"

"Plato is the father of idealism; but it is an idealism born, not of abstraction, but of a deeply stirred emotional experience."

"That Heraclitean flux, the 'perpetual motion' of things, is the primary truth of experience."

"Art, poetry, music—these are not merely recreations for the citizen, but the very atmosphere in which the soul learns to love the beautiful and the true."

"With Plato, to know is to remember; all true knowledge is a reminiscence of that brighter world in which the soul once walked."

"The Republic is before all things a-mused; it is a search after the true commonwealth, built not with hands, but in the ideal architecture of the human mind."

"Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government."

"True emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul."

"The most violent element in society is ignorance."

"Our institutions rob us of our right to breath, to keep in touch with nature, to have a healthy body and a clear brain."