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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

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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
Minds
Opinion
Small
Country
Agreeing
Great
Produced
Mind
Test
Tests
Greatness

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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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The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
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Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
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Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.
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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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Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.
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The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it
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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.
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Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
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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 desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
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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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Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
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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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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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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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Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.
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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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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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It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.
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