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If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up.

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
Truths
Strongest
Conjure
Argument
Skillful
Devil
Advocate
Exist
Arguments
Imagine
Supply
Important
Indispensable
Opponents

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Language is the light of the mind
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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.
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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.
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All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
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Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end.
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The legal subordination of one sex to another - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
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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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There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
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The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.
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Trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of any goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general and thus his conduct, in principal, comes within the jurisdiction of society.
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So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.
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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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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.
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All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good.
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The validity of all the Inductive Methods depends on the assumption that every event, or the beginning of every phenomenon, must have some cause some antecedent, upon the existence of which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent.
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To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
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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.
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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.
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That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
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