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I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.

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
Hopes
Investing
Despair
Large
Class
Despairs
Hope
Admired
Others
Sage
Persons
Observed

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Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
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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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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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Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
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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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In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.
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What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
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A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.
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The successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal.
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In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.
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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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Language is the light of the mind
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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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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.
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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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A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility.
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God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.
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The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
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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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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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