Quote

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.

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
May
Institutions
Liberties
Great
Cases
Panic
Even
Trust
Temporary
Men
Feet
Prefer
Subvert
People
Liberty
Powers
Induced
Free
Enthusiasm
Unfit
Individual
Lays
Discouragement
Government
Fit
Momentary

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The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
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Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
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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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Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
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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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The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor.
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The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.
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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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The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.
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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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The strongest of all arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place.
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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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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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All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.
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A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.
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Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.
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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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How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
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Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses.
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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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