Quote

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

John Stuart Mill

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Living
Exactly
Model
Nature
Built
According
Human
Grow
Diversity
Prescribed
Humans
Tree
Forces
Gymnastics
Thing
Sides
Requires
Tendency
Work
Grows
Develop
Inward
Make
Justice
Machines
Tendencies
Force
Models
Machine

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
John Stuart Mill
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
John Stuart Mill
Image
Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
John Stuart Mill
Image
He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
John Stuart Mill
Image
All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.
John Stuart Mill
Image
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
John Stuart Mill
Image
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
John Stuart Mill
Image
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
Image
It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.
John Stuart Mill
Image
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
John Stuart Mill
Image
Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.
John Stuart Mill
Image
In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The legal subordination of one sex to another - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.
John Stuart Mill