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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
Every
Thinks
Men
Service
Thinking
Grateful
Says
Cherished
Liberty
Attacking
Opinion
Frankly
Public
Opinions
Freedom
Fully
More quotes by 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
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
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
... All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas.
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
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
My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?
John Stuart Mill
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
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
John Stuart Mill
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
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.
John Stuart Mill
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
John Stuart Mill
There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
John Stuart Mill
Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.
John Stuart Mill
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.
John Stuart Mill
It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible.
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
Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
John Stuart Mill
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
John Stuart Mill
All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.
John Stuart Mill
