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

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On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
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The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
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The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
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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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The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
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My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching but...precede it.
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What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?
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When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
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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.
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Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.
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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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The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor.
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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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The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
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Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.
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Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.
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There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
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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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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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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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