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All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.
John Stuart Mill -
I have a hundred times heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind could devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it.
John Stuart Mill
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I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings.
John Stuart Mill -
We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.
John Stuart Mill -
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
John Stuart Mill -
Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.
John Stuart Mill -
The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.
John Stuart Mill -
When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
John Stuart Mill
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Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.
John Stuart Mill -
Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme," not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.
John Stuart Mill -
I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it.
John Stuart Mill -
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
John Stuart Mill -
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
John Stuart Mill -
The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
John Stuart Mill
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The ends of scientific classification are best answered, when the objects are formed into groups respecting which a greater number of general propositions can be made, and those propositions more important, than could be made respecting any other groups into which the same things could be distributed. ... A classification thus formed is properly scientific or philosophical, and is commonly called a Natural, in contradistinction to a Technical or Artificial, classification or arrangement.
John Stuart Mill -
The question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures.
John Stuart Mill -
It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.
John Stuart Mill -
The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.
John Stuart Mill -
Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.
John Stuart Mill -
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
John Stuart Mill
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... the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.
John Stuart Mill -
It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.
John Stuart Mill -
In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.
John Stuart Mill -
If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.
John Stuart Mill