John Locke

The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.

For no man can, in any case, be obliged to obey the laws of a foreign prince or state, who hath not given him leave to be of his religion, or to live within his territories.

Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that 'tis hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it.

Every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

But if they will not be brought to embrace the true religion, and that for the salvation of their souls, what will become of them?

God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated.

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

Parents have a power over their children, to support and govern them for their good, till they are of capacity to shift for themselves.

The people cannot be safe, though the form of the commonwealth be never so exactly framed, unless they have a right to change the legislative power, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.

For where there is no property, there is no injustice.

The civil magistrate has no jurisdiction over the salvation of souls.

I here put the case of a man, whose mind is so far out of order, that he takes himself to be a king.

The power of the husband is so far from that of an absolute monarch, that the wife has in many cases a liberty to separate herself from him, where natural right or their contract allows it.

No government can have a right to obedience from a people who have not freely consented to it.

The law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders.

Though the things of nature are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself the great foundation of property.

Rebellion is an opposition, not to persons, but to authority.

For I confess myself to have been guilty of the same error, of not having looked far enough into the nature of the thing.

The private judgment of every particular person concerning the truth or falsehood of any doctrine, or the sincerity of any worship, cannot be over-ruled by the public authority of the commonwealth.