John Stuart Mill Quotes
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The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
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No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
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He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
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The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
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The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
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It is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
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All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.
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There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.
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Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.
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Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
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A being who can create a race of men devoid of real freedom and inevitably foredoomed to be sinners, and then punish them for being what he has made them, may be omnipotent and various other things, but he is not what the English language has always intended by the adjective holy.
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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
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Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
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Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
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My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching but...precede it.
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Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish.
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The United States is no more a Christian nation because most of its citizens are Christians than it is a 'white' nation because most of its citizens are white. We are Americans because we practice democracy and believe in republican government, not because we practice revealed religion and believe in Bible-based government.
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The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.
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In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.
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Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.
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To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
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It is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions.
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It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible.
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The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments-of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue-are complete sceptics in religion.