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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
Public
Opinions
Freedom
Fully
Every
Thinks
Men
Service
Thinking
Grateful
Says
Cherished
Liberty
Attacking
Opinion
Frankly
More quotes by 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.
John Stuart Mill
Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.
John Stuart Mill
[A] man and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing what nobody does, or of not doing what everybody does, is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency.
John Stuart Mill
The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.
John Stuart Mill
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
John Stuart Mill
When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
John Stuart Mill
I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings
John Stuart Mill
Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
John Stuart Mill
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.
John Stuart Mill
Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
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
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
So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.
John Stuart Mill
So Long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, & live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or gov't.
John Stuart Mill
To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality
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
Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses.
John Stuart Mill
To mistake money for wealth, is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.
John Stuart Mill
On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
John Stuart Mill
Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.
John Stuart Mill
