I am sure the principal end why we are to get knowledge here, is to make use of it for the benefit of ourselves and others in this world; but if by g… - John Locke
" "I am sure the principal end why we are to get knowledge here, is to make use of it for the benefit of ourselves and others in this world; but if by gaining it we destroy our health, we labour for a thing that will be useless in our hands, and if by harnessing our bodies (though with a design to render ourselves more useful) we deprive ourselves of the abilities and opportunities of doing that good we might have done with a meaner talent, which God thought sufficient for us by having denied us the strength to improve it to that pitch which men of higher constitutions can attain to, we rob God of so much service, and our neighbor of all that help, which, in a state of health, with moderate knowledge, we might have been able to perform. He that sinks his vessel by overloading it, though it be with gold and silver and precious stones, will gives his owner but an ill account of his voyage.
About John Locke
John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an influential English philosopher and social contract theorist. He developed an alternative to the Hobbesian state of nature and asserted a government could be good only if it received the consent of the governed and protected the natural rights of life, liberty, and estate. If such a consent was not achieved, Locke argued in favour of a right of rebellion, which he referred to as an "appeal to heaven".
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Additional quotes by John Locke
The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.
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Though you give no countenance to the complaints of the querulous, yet take care to curb the insolence and ill nature of the injurious. When you observe it yourself, reprove it before the injur'd party: but if the complaint be of something really worth your notice, and prevention another time, then reprove the offender by himself alone, out of sight of him who complain'd and make him go and ask pardon, and make reparation; which ooming thus, as it were from himself, will be the more cheerfully performed, and more kindly receiv'd, the love strenghten'd between them, and a custom of civility grow familiar amongst your children.