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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
All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.
John Stuart Mill
A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.
John Stuart Mill
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.
John Stuart Mill
The moment one asks himself whether he is happy, he ceases to be so.
John Stuart Mill
Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.
John Stuart Mill
To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
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
Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.
John Stuart Mill
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.
John Stuart Mill
Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
John Stuart Mill
Language is the light of the mind
John Stuart Mill
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.
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
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
John Stuart Mill
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
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
Human beings are no longer born to their place in life...but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.
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
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
John Stuart Mill
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
John Stuart Mill