Quote

A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

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
Whatever
Persistence
Grievously
Form
Belongs
Errs
Doe
Midst
Dispel
Ideas
Curiosity
Looming
Thing
Exist
Imagines
Men
Seen
Outlines
Imagine
Meets
Clear
Vague
Confusedly

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The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
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Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
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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.
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The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
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Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
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To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality
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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.
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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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To mistake money for wealth, is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.
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The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
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The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
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The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.
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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.
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Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
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The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.
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Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
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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.
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The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind - the lower animals.
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Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.
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Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
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