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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

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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
Masters
Scarcely
Avowed
Power
Mass
Favour
Wields
Give
However
Elections
Autocracy
Government
Circumstances
Rare
Favours
Giving
Name
Excitement
Surpassed
Public
Master
Bribery
Almost
Election
Withhold
Names
Extraordinary
Rendering

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He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.
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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.
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Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.
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A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.
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A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.
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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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Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.
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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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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 true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.
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What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?
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Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.
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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.
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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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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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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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