Quote

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

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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
Always
Strong
Atheism
Existed
Men
Science
Independent
Tendency
Found
Name
Received
Reason
Existence
Tendencies
Abstruse
Must
Names
Rage
Peculiarly
Real
Belief
Mysterious
Answering
Something
Whatever
Suppose
Entity
Believe
Fear
None
Imagined

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Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.
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Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
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Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
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The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
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The great majority of those who speak of perfectibility as a dream, do so because they feel that it is one which would afford them no pleasure if it were realized.
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A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.
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In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
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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.
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It would not be easy even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.
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Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
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Language is the light of the mind
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A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
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The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
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He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.
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To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that 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.
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Most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness. Expecting...in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find, and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capability of happiness.
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In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. . . .
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I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.
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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
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A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty.
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