Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by John Stuart Mill

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
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
– John Stuart Mill
All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.
– John Stuart Mill
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
– John Stuart Mill
As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
– John Stuart Mill
Conversancy with Hegel tends to deprave one's intellect.
– John Stuart Mill
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had 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
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
– John Stuart Mill
I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.
– John Stuart Mill
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
– John Stuart Mill
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
– John Stuart Mill
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
– John Stuart Mill
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
– John Stuart Mill
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
– John Stuart Mill
The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
– John Stuart Mill
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
– John Stuart Mill
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
– John Stuart Mill
The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.
– John Stuart Mill
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
– John Stuart Mill
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
– John Stuart Mill
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
– John Stuart Mill
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
– John Stuart Mill
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.
– John Stuart Mill
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
– John Stuart Mill
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
– 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
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
– John Stuart Mill
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
– John Stuart Mill
The opening of a foreign trade, by making them acquainted with new objects, or tempting them by the easier acquisition of things which they had not previously thought attainable, sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people: inducing those who were satisfied with scanty comforts and little work, to work harder for the gratification of their new tastes, and even to save, and accumulate capital, for the still more complete satisfaction of those tastes at a future time.
– John Stuart Mill
Indeed the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into common places, but which all experience refutes.
– John Stuart Mill
One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.
– John Stuart Mill
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. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
– John Stuart Mill
Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.
– John Stuart Mill
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
– John Stuart Mill
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.
– John Stuart Mill
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
– John Stuart Mill
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
– John Stuart Mill
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
– John Stuart Mill
Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.
– John Stuart Mill
If all mankind minus one were of one 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
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
– John Stuart Mill
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.
– John Stuart Mill