Quote Of The Day By John Locke: 'Reading Furnishes The Mind Only With...'

John Locke was an English philosopher from the 17th century who helped establish British Empiricism as a school of thought. For those non-philosophy majors, British Empiricism is all about our senses and experiences helping to create knowledge. With his thoughts on reason and individual rights, he has also been called "the father of the Enlightenment," according to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Locke was born in Somerset, England in 1632. His parents were Puritans, and his father fought on the side of the Parliamentarians against the Royalists in the English Civil War that took place when Locke was young. This seemed to help inform some of his ideas about who should be the leader in a society. Instead of there being a king who was granted the role by God, Locke felt that people should be able to govern themselves, and the government should allow and protect every citizen's inherent and protected rights, notably life, liberty, and property.

He studied, and later taught, at the University of Oxford, and along with his philosophical writing, he was also a physician. Locke's ideas on religion, politics, government, and life greatly influenced America's founding fathers in putting together documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. His theories are still studied today, even making their way into some pop culture: Locke's philosophies were one of many included on NBC's "The Good Place." That's why one of Locke's ideas is The List's quote of the day.

John Locke once wrote, "Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours." This is from the section on "Reading" in Locke's "Of the Conduct of the Understanding." 

Published two years after he died, the text was all about examining how we think and learn. His quote is about the importance of not just consuming information, but taking time to truly learn and understand something.

John Locke's quote points us to the importance of our own thoughts and considerations. He isn't advising people not to read, but rather not to just read. We have to take some time to consider other people's ideas and develop our own understanding of them if we want to expand on our own knowledge base.

Doing a deeper dive into what we read is the only way that we'll build any real knowledge about the world. It's like the difference between being able to recite facts about a situation and being able to understand why a situation happened and what the causes and effects of the situation may be. 

While it seems unlikely that Locke could have imagined someone scrolling through Facebook, the overall idea still applies. Rather than simply scroll and consume as much as we can at a surface level, we need to look and think more deeply. Otherwise, there's little that we can truly know. And without truly knowing something, we won't be able to act on it as thoughtfully or as well.

• "No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."
• "Truth is all simple, all pure, will bear no mixture of anything else with it."
• "And Reason, which is that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions."
• "How necessary health is to our business and happiness; and how requisite a strong constitution, able to endure hardships and fatigue, is, to one that will make any figure in the world[.]"
• "Another thing, that is of great advantage to every one's health, but especially children's, is, to be much in the open air[.]"