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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.

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
Free
Genius
Palpable
Often
Courage
Subsequent
Happens
Mankind
Credible
Ideas
Becomes
Appeared
Ever
Effort
Absurdity
Without
Imagine
Difficulty
Thing
Belief
Extraordinary
Time
Age
Universal

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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In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.
John Stuart Mill
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A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty.
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Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
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When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
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The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.
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All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.
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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
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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
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Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.
John Stuart Mill
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Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?
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Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.
John Stuart Mill
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Most persons have but a very moderate capacity of happiness. Expecting...in marriage a far greater degree of happiness than they commonly find, and knowing not that the fault is in their own scanty capability of happiness.
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No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
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God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
John Stuart Mill
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Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
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No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
John Stuart Mill
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But these few are the salt of the earth without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.
John Stuart Mill