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

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.
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Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.
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The guesses which serve to give mental unity and wholeness to a chaos of scattered particulars, are accidents which rarely occur to any minds but those abounding in knowledge and disciplined in intellectual combinations.
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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.
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The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
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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.
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The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
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That a thing is peculiar is no argument for its being blamable since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.
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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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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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When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government.
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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.
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A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
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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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There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.
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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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Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.
John Stuart Mill
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How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
John Stuart Mill
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The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill