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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.

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
Age
Precisely
Knee
Order
Knees
Eccentric
Make
Tyranny
Custom
People
Service
Bend
Mere
Refusal
Example
Desirable
Opinion
Conformity
Eccentricity
Break
Customs
Reproach

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
John Stuart Mill
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Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet, so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man.
John Stuart Mill
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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
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I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.
John Stuart Mill
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There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
John Stuart Mill
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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
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All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill
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As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.
John Stuart Mill
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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
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All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.
John Stuart Mill
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Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill
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... 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
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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
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The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
John Stuart Mill
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The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
John Stuart Mill
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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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Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
John Stuart Mill
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The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out not any particular manifestation of that principle.
John Stuart Mill
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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
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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