John Stuart Mill Quotes

Best Quotes by John Stuart Mill (Top 10)

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
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
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. 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
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
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
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
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
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
One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
John Stuart Mill
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

More John Stuart Mill Quotes

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
John Stuart Mill
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
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
John Stuart Mill
As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
John Stuart Mill
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.
John Stuart Mill
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
John Stuart Mill
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
John Stuart Mill
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
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
John Stuart Mill
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
John Stuart Mill
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
John Stuart Mill
To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
John Stuart Mill
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
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England
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 nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration.
John Stuart Mill
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
John Stuart Mill
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
Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.
John Stuart Mill
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
John Stuart Mill
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
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
John Stuart Mill
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
John Stuart Mill
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
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
John Stuart Mill
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
John Stuart Mill
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
John Stuart Mill
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
John Stuart Mill
The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.
John Stuart Mill
Language is the light of the mind
John Stuart Mill
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
John Stuart Mill
That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
John Stuart Mill
Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.
John Stuart Mill