Quote

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

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
Opinion
Held
Living
False
Unwillingly
Strong
Fully
Fearlessly
True
Moved
Discussed
Truth
However
Dogma
May
Possibility
Frequently
Persons
Dead
Consideration
Person
Ought
Admit

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
John Stuart Mill
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The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the sprits of its friends all over the civilized world... [The American Civil War] is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs.
John Stuart Mill
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To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow creatures.
John Stuart Mill
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The guesses which serve to give mental unity and wholeness to a chaos of scattered particulars, are accidents which rarely occur to any minds but those abounding in knowledge and disciplined in intellectual combinations.
John Stuart Mill
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Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
John Stuart Mill
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Human beings are no longer born to their place in life...but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.
John Stuart Mill
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The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
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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
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
John Stuart Mill
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When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government.
John Stuart Mill
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There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character.
John Stuart Mill
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I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.
John Stuart Mill
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In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.
John Stuart Mill
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The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.
John Stuart Mill
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All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill