Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Circumstances
Plain
Highest
Faculty
Art
Excellence
Thing
Till
Trying
Considered
Duly
Life
Thou
Faculties
Rule
Outward
Capable
Thyself

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

Image
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
Image
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
John Stuart Mill
Image
All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good.
John Stuart Mill
Image
It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.
John Stuart Mill
Image
To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
John Stuart Mill
Image
Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.
John Stuart Mill
Image
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
Image
All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.
John Stuart Mill
Image
Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?
John Stuart Mill
Image
A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
John Stuart Mill
Image
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
John Stuart Mill
Image
And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.
John Stuart Mill
Image
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
Image
If I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
John Stuart Mill
Image
The legal subordination of one sex to another - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
John Stuart Mill
Image
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill
Image
A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement.
John Stuart Mill