John Locke — Second Treatise of Government

50 published claims from this book.

• A ruler who acts by private will forfeits all right to obedience
• Attempted enslavement is itself an act of war justifying resistance
• Benevolent rulers’ precedents endanger liberty when successors claim them as rights
• Birthplace does not make anyone a natural subject of a government.
• Children are born to equality but not in it, gaining freedom only with reason.
• Common goods must be appropriated before they can serve anyone
• Consent cannot justify self-enslavement because no one owns his own life
• Despotical power arises only from forfeiture in war, never from compact
• Early men preferred paternal rule because it protected rather than restrained them.
• Entire commonwealths remain in the state of nature relative to outsiders
• Even absolutism’s own champion concedes a king may forfeit his crown
• Executive discretion beyond statute is justified by law’s unavoidable incompleteness
• Force without authority is a state of war justifying armed resistance
• Forced obedience to absolute power is worse than the state of nature
• Foreign affairs cannot be governed by fixed antecedent laws
• Forfeited or expired legislative power reverts to the people to remake government
• Government’s end is human good, not rulers’ will
• Labor produces nine-tenths or more of all useful value
• Leaving cultivated land to waste forfeits one’s claim to it
• Legislative power cannot be delegated to hands other than the people’s choice
• Legislative power cannot take property without the owner’s consent
• Legislative power is inherently limited to the common good and standing law
• Legitimate authority cannot rest on Adamic inheritance, only on a new foundation
• Locke’s commonwealth means any independent political community, not a specific regime
• Locke’s Second Treatise was widely cited in pre-revolutionary America
• Locke’s theory of limited government chiefly serves his case for unlimited private property
• Mixing one’s labor with nature generates private property
• Money emerged by mutual consent as a durable medium
• Money’s invention legitimizes unequal land possession without society
• Natural freedom and childhood subjection rest on the same principle of attained reason.
• Oppressed people will rebel regardless of rulers’ divine claims
• Passive obedience doctrine serves only the predator’s interest
• Peace purchased by submission to force is worthless
• Persons lacking reason can never be free and remain under others’ governance for life.
• Perverted justice under legal forms still constitutes a state of war
• Political and paternal power are distinct in foundation and end, not the same thing.
• Political liberty means rule by law, not unchecked individual license
• Political power is lawmaking backed by force and limited to the public good
• Property rights are limited to what one can use before spoilage
• Revolution requires an accumulating visible train of abuses
• Rotten boroughs show that custom-based representation becomes absurd over time
• Slavery is a continuing state of war, not a legitimate compact
• State practice confirms that no one is born a subject of any government.
• The historical contraction of discretionary prerogative into written law followed princely abuse
• The legislative power’s location determines a government’s entire form
• The people permanently retain the supreme power to replace their legislative
• The people who depute power are the proper judge of its abuse
• The state of nature and state of war are distinct conditions
• Unanimous consent is practically impossible, so majority rule is a practical necessity.
• Unjust conquest confers no right over the conquered