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The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again.

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Mind

More quotes by John Locke

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

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

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

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.

Two Treatises of Government (1689)

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Locke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.