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political liberties or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe,
establishment of constitutional checks;
the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will.
success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation.
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: the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against
All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct, therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place,
only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions;
things which whenever it is obviously a man's duty to do, he may rightfully be made responsible to society for not doing.
human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects,
liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like,
freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others:
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.
human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power;
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.
if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth,
it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
ages are no more infallible than individuals;
If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions may be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed.
It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon others
There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience.
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 belief which is contrary to truth can be really useful:
question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side.
the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods
real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it,
A rule thus self-convicted of absurdity so far as regards its professed purpose, can be kept in force only as a badge of hatred, a relic of persecution;
Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion.
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation,
the discussion of the greatest questions which can occupy humanity is considered to be closed, we cannot hope to find that generally high scale of mental activity
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.
Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections.
truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say;
grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself.
there are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realised, until personal experience has brought it home.
deeply impressed on the mind, if the man had been accustomed to hear it argued pro and con by people who did understand it. The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful,
two possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth.
one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception.
a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life;
it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.
the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions.
it is not on the impassioned partisan, it is on the calmer and more disinterested bystander, that this collision of opinions works its salutary effect.
there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices,
every opinion which embodies any fraction of the truth, not only finds advocates, but is so advocated as to be listened to.
First, 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. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is,
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