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I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings

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
States
Beings
Struggling
Human
Normal
Desirable
Humans
Type
Existing
Think
Struggle
Heels
Trampling
Thinking
Economy
Crush
Treading
Life
State
Ideal
Crushing
Social
Held
Charmed
Form
Ideals
Confess

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement.
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Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?
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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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The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.
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The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.
John Stuart Mill
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The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it
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The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.
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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
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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.
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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.
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The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.
John Stuart Mill
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Language is the light of the mind
John Stuart Mill
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Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
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Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
John Stuart Mill
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Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.
John Stuart Mill
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In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character.
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A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.
John Stuart Mill