John Stuart Mill Quotes
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[I] put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!
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The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.
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On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a 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.
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If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development, and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the varieties of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate.
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A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.
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Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.
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What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?
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..Whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible form of society...
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The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
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Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island of infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.
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A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.
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Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
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Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.
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Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.
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The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
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The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.
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Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
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The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us.
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Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all?
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Most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness. Expecting...in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find, and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capability of happiness.
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To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
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Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.
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I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.
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One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.