Q0186

John Locke

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.
Thinker John Locke
School British Empiricism
Source An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.i.2
Theme Experience
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.i.2, within the tradition of British Empiricism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of experience, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In John Locke's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: John Locke. (n.d.). Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0186

MLA: John Locke. “Whence has it all the materials of reason….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0186.

Chicago: John Locke. “Whence has it all the materials of reason….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0186.

Same thinker

More from John Locke

  1. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it…Reason…teaches all mankind…that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
  2. As far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person.
  3. Where there is no law, there is no freedom.
  4. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters.
  5. Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

All quotations by John Locke

Same theme

More on experience

  1. Their being is to be perceived.
  2. For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other.
  3. Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.
  4. Experience is not a veil that shuts man off from nature; it is a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature.
  5. In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them.

Browse the experience theme