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Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.

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
Kings
Habitually
Progress
Improving
Almost
Superior
Company
Superiors
Society
Closer
Even
Begins
Really
Familiar
Deteriorate
Always
King
Deteriorating

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There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.
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The great majority of those who speak of perfectibility as a dream, do so because they feel that it is one which would afford them no pleasure if it were realized.
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The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out not any particular manifestation of that principle.
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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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Trade is a social act.
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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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My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?
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Every opinion which embodies somewhat of the portion of truth which the common opinion omits, ought to be considered precious, with whatever amount of error and confusion that truth may be blended.
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Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
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In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.
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It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.
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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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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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Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.
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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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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.
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The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor.
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That a thing is peculiar is no argument for its being blamable since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.
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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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