John Stuart Mill famous quotes

There is no 'one-size-fits-all' way to build an audience.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Book #Marketing #Way

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

#Advantage #Motive

One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

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 Mill

#Freedom #Civil Rights #Would Be

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 Mill

#People #Liberty #Income

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Mind #Use #Originality

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 Mill

#War #Power #Community

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 Mill

#Spiritual #Freedom #Health

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

#Freedom #War #Fighting

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

#Government #Community #Majority

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 Mill

#Life #Evil #Accountability

...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

#Children #Training #Mind

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Stupid #People #Conservative

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

#Motivational #Freedom #Names

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
-- John Stuart Mill

#People #Liberty #Nuisance

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

#Freedom #People #Liberty

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

#Men #Order #Hands

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Mind #Fixed

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Crush #Individuality #Liberty

Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Desire #Liberty

Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Philosophy #Lying #Rights

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 Mill

#War #Patriotic #Thinking

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

#Christian #Lying #Selfish

Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Character #Miracle #Historical

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

#Accountability #Action #Individual

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Intellectual #Sides #Debate

Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Inspirational #Adoption #Experience

‎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

#Education #Successful #Government

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

#Philosophy #Thinking #Errors

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

#Opportunity #Expression #Errors

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Good Man #Needs

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising
-- John Stuart Mill

#Sleep #Rich #Grows

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.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Sleep #Land #Effort

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Majority #Inability

The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Truth #Ideas #Forever

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Positive Thinking #Fruit #Originality

The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Running #Long #Citizenship

Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Atmosphere #Genius #Breathe

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Life #Party #Order

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Order #Minorities #Genius

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Hearing #Opinion #Assuming

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.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Mean #Practice #Ideas

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Evil #Liberty #Would Be

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Truth #Home #Experience

Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Desire #Rich

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Courage #Eccentric #Vigor

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Happiness #Art #Mean

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Happiness

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Community #Force #Civilized

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Pigs #Fool #Sides

Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Survival #Flavor #Certain

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Inspirational #Happiness #Inner Peace

The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
-- John Stuart Mill

#Physicians #Lawyer #University

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Character #Order #People

A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Government #Names #Giving

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

#Truth #Honesty #Men

the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Wise #Character #Men

Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Physicians #Lawyer

It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Christian #Empires #Different

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Christian #Character #Evil

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Truth #Halloween #Opinion

Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Nature #Solitude #Individual

All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Political #Revolution #Opinion

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Good Man #Needs

The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind - the lower animals.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Children #Animal #Favour

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others. . . .
-- John Stuart Mill

#Individuality #Development #Proportion

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Wife #Slave #Length

On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Hurtful #Opinion #Mature

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Crush #Men #Names

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Strong #Fear #Real

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.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Change #Thinking #Fundamentals

I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Stupid #Believe #Mean

The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Agnostic #Duty #Dissent

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

#Individuality #Salt #Earth

The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Routine #Disease #Rebellious

Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Taken #Light #People

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

#Justice #Tree #Sides

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 Mill

#Suffering #Mankind #Compelling

Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Stupid #Circles #Feelings

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Technology #Toil #Invention

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Education #Doe #Pupils

A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Men #Feet #People

The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Despotism

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them.
-- John Stuart Mill

#Individuality #Development #Proportion