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Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

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
Legitimate
Mode
Provided
Dealing
Improvement
Ends
Government
Barbarians
Despotism

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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
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[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.
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The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
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Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.
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The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs.
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Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.
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Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
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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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When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
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Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.
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