Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
John Stuart Mill
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
John Stuart Mill
Age: 67 †
Born: 1806
Born: January 1
Died: 1873
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Clerk
Economist
Egalitarianism
Philosopher
Politician
Suffragist
Writer
Islington
J. S. Mill
Government
Reason
Cogent
Great
Restricting
Unnecessarily
Interference
Adding
Evil
Power
More quotes by John Stuart Mill
When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government.
John Stuart Mill
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
John Stuart Mill
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
John Stuart Mill
A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
John Stuart Mill
The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
John Stuart Mill
The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community.
John Stuart Mill
Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his toil.
John Stuart Mill
A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.
John Stuart Mill
He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.
John Stuart Mill
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.
John Stuart Mill
With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.
John Stuart Mill
If I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.
John Stuart Mill
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
John Stuart Mill
It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal.
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
Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.
John Stuart Mill
The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.
John Stuart Mill
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
John Stuart Mill
Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.
John Stuart Mill
Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
John Stuart Mill
