Quote

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

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If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up.
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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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My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching but...precede it.
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The validity of all the Inductive Methods depends on the assumption that every event, or the beginning of every phenomenon, must have some cause some antecedent, upon the existence of which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent.
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It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal.
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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.
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Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
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All action is for the sake of some end and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.
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Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
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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.
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What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?
John Stuart Mill
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The moment one asks himself whether he is happy, he ceases to be so.
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In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. . . .
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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.
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The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
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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.
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There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone
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Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
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The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
John Stuart Mill