John Stuart Mill > Quotes

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”
― John Stuart Mill

“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.”
― John Stuart Mill

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
― John Stuart Mill

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
― John Stuart Mill

“Stupidity is much the same all the world over”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
― John Stuart Mill

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
― John Stuart Mill

“Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.”
― John Stuart Mill

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid,
but most stupid people are conservatives.”
― John Stuart Mill

“that so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. 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.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs. ”
― John Stuart Mill

“The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”
― John Stuart Mill

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill

“But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been... one of the primary sources of progress. ”
― John Stuart Mill

“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.”
― John Stuart Mill

“Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.”
― John Stuart Mill

“Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.”
― John Stuart Mill

“if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.”
― John Stuart Mill

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think…”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture—is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character…”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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 a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.”
― John Stuart Mill

“The strongest of all arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. ”
― John Stuart Mill

“The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; type people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility. ”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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 Subjection of Women

“A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.”
― John Stuart Mill

“...to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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.”
― John Stuart Mill

“There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life.”
― John Stuart Mill

“There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone”
― John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

“Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.”
― John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

“It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“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.”
― John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

“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, Autobiography

“A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty