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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.

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
Politics
Central
Detail
Society
Creates
Grade
Freedom
Details
Carrying
Desire
Ambition
Lowest
Often
Institutions
Reverse
Spirit
Democratic
Grades
Domination
Political
Constitution
Liberalism
Confined
Government
Economy
Precisely
Supported

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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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The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.
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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
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Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
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So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.
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The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
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It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible.
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All action is for the sake of some end and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.
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All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.
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Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
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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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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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No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
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To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
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Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.
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The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.
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The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.
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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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If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.
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The moment one asks himself whether he is happy, he ceases to be so.
John Stuart Mill