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Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being pushed to an extreme, not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.

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
Good
Speech
Arguments
Men
Objects
Extreme
Unless
Admit
Cases
Extremes
Strange
Object
Seeing
Reasons
Free
Argument
Validity
Reason
Case
Pushed

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The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.
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What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
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The successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal.
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In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.
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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
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Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
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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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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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The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
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Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.
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There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.
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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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Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
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Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
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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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God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
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The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
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Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.
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The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.
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