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Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

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
General
Supplied
Subjects
Collision
Opinion
Adverse
Since
Prevailing
Chance
Rarely
Truth
Healing
Whole
Subject
Never
Conflict
Remainder

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Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
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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.
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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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The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.
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Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.
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Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
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All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.
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Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
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The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
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Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
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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 principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.
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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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The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.
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Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
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Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
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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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The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
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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.
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So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.
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