John Locke
The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.
Misconceptions
Locke wrote that the mind is a "tabula rasa".
In English he writes "white paper". "Table rase" is the word of his French translator Coste, who adds "Tabula rasa" in the margin. The image itself is old: Aristotle already uses the writing tablet on which nothing is yet written.
For Locke, we are born with no abilities at all: everything is learned.
He denies innate ideas and principles, not faculties. He himself grants that the capacity to know is innate; only knowledge is acquired.
Locke defended toleration for everyone.
He asks that neither pagans, Muslims nor Jews be excluded from civil rights because of their religion. But he refuses to tolerate atheists, because in his view their oaths are worthless, and churches whose members put themselves in the service of a foreign prince (usually read as Catholics, bound to the pope).
For Locke, property has no limits.
At first there are two limits: leave enough and as good for others, and let nothing spoil. But he grants that money, which does not rot, later allows unequal possessions by tacit consent. This is the point Rousseau and Marx will attack.
Locke condemned slavery.
He holds that nobody can sell himself into slavery, since we have no power over our own life. But he justifies the slavery of a captive taken in a just war. And he himself invested in the Royal African Company, which engaged in the slave trade.