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... All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas.

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
Need
Add
Needs
Useful
Even
Aspect
Support
Heard
Disproving
Idea
Examining
Truth
Whatsoever
Ideas
Contains

More quotes by John Stuart Mill

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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.
John Stuart Mill
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That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
John Stuart Mill
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Trade is a social act.
John Stuart Mill
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All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill
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Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Language is the light of the mind
John Stuart Mill
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Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
John Stuart Mill
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Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet, so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man.
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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A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
John Stuart Mill
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Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
John Stuart Mill
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But these few are the salt of the earth without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.
John Stuart Mill
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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.
John Stuart Mill
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The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
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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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.
John Stuart Mill
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Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
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