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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

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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
Thinking
Grateful
Says
Cherished
Liberty
Attacking
Opinion
Frankly
Public
Opinions
Freedom
Fully
Every
Thinks
Men
Service

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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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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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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And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.
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Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his toil.
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The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
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Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
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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.
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All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.
John Stuart Mill
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Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
John Stuart Mill
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Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
John Stuart Mill
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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
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The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind - the lower animals.
John Stuart Mill
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What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
John Stuart Mill
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There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
John Stuart Mill
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The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.
John Stuart Mill