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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

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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
First
Sight
Consequences
Tracing
Real
Begin
Observation
Regularity
Even
Follow
Confused
Corrections
Make
Learn
Appearance
Appearances
Making
False
Differ
Process
Necessarily
Phenomena
Science
Complicated
Observing
Tentative
Firsts
Consequence
Assumption
Supposition

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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.
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There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
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Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
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The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
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The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.
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I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.
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Every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended.
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The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
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Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.
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All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.
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A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.
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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.
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The successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal.
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It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.
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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.
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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 natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community.
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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.
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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.
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The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
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