I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
Interpretation
Actions reveal true thoughts and intentions more clearly than words.
In this quote, John Locke suggests that the true nature of a person can be better understood through their actions rather than their spoken words. He emphasizes the idea that what individuals do reflects their deeper beliefs and intentions, thereby serving as a more reliable indicator of their thoughts and character.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about leadership to emphasize the importance of leading by example.
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.
There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.
I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow.
Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake.
Hardly anyone in the world is an American
It is the resurrection that makes Good Friday good.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
Legal ethics is a misnomer ... lawyers conducting themselves legally are not necessarily conducting themselves morally ."...and ..."The zero sum nature of the legal system, combined with the universal adoption of zealotry as the marching orders of practioners and prosecutors, transforms the moral mission of the legal system from one of truth-seeking, storytelling, and justice, to one of fabrication, distortion, and manipulation in pursuit of victory. These victories, however, make us all losers.
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