John Stuart Mill Quotes
-
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.
-
On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
-
All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
-
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
-
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
-
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
-
I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner.
-
Stupidity is much the same all the world over.
-
Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments.
-
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
-
A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.
-
He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.
-
If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition.
-
The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.
-
Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
-
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
-
The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.
-
I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.
-
The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor.
-
There is nothing which an untrained mind shows itself more hopelessly incapable, than in drawing the proper general conclusions from its own experience. And even trained minds, when all their training is on a special subject, and does not extend to the general principles of induction, are only kept right when there are ready opportunities of verifying their inferences by facts.
-
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
-
Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character.
-
It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.
-
Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.