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

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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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Trade is a social act.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet, so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man.
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Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
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Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
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Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
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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 dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
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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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The moment one asks himself whether he is happy, he ceases to be so.
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In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.
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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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The successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal.
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Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
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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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