John Stuart Mill Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
-- John Stuart MillSource : On Liberty ch. 2 (1859)
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“To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors.”
-- John Stuart MillSource : John Stuart Mill (1866). “Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy”, p.487
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“Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“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.”
-- John Stuart MillSource : On Liberty ch. 1 (1859)
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“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”
-- John Stuart MillSource : John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.160, Hackett Publishing
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“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
-- John Stuart MillSource : John Stuart Mill, G. W. Smith (1998). “John Stuart Mill's Social and Political Thought: Freedom”, p.110, Taylor & Francis
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“...to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society”
-- John Stuart Mill -
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“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
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“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“Liberty consists in doing what one desires.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
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“Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”
-- John Stuart MillSource : "The Contest in America", Fraser's Magazine, February 1862.
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“Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“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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“The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“‎A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.”
-- John Stuart Mill -
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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…”
-- John Stuart Mill -
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
-- John Stuart Mill
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