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Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

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
Looks
Need
Needs
Good
Apathy
Men
Compass
Ends
Look
Nothing

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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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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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.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
John Stuart Mill
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The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
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.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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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
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The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.
John Stuart Mill
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Trade is a social act.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
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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Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
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
John Stuart Mill
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Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.
John Stuart Mill