John Stuart Mill Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill Quotes & Sayings

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Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign. — John Stuart Mill

To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman. — John Stuart Mill

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it. — John Stuart Mill

That so few dare be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time. — John Stuart Mill

[T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible. — John Stuart Mill

A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule. — John Stuart Mill

Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters. — John Stuart Mill

Command and obedience are but unfortunate necessities of human life: society in equality is its normal state. — John Stuart Mill

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

A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility. — John Stuart Mill

Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends. — John Stuart Mill

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

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself. — John Stuart Mill

Of all many-sided subjects, [education] is the one which has the greatest number of sides. — John Stuart Mill

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread. — John Stuart Mill

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

My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God? — John Stuart Mill

A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. — John Stuart Mill

We know how easily the uselessness of almost every branch of knowledge may be proved to the complete satisfaction of those who do not possess it. — John Stuart Mill

The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism. — John Stuart Mill

The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves. — John Stuart Mill

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement. — John Stuart Mill

Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field. — John Stuart Mill

Any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful. — John Stuart Mill

The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. — John Stuart Mill

So natural to mankind is intolerance ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized. — John Stuart Mill

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors. — John Stuart Mill

The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism. — John Stuart Mill

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. — John Stuart Mill

In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed. — 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 successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal. — John Stuart Mill

If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. — John Stuart Mill

Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals. — John Stuart Mill

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. — John Stuart Mill

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

To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality — John Stuart Mill

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. — John Stuart Mill

Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end. — John Stuart Mill

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

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. — John Stuart Mill

The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. — John Stuart Mill

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

The moment one asks himself whether he is happy, he ceases to be so. — 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

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

Geometry is a Deductive Science. — John Stuart Mill

Mill was very clear on this point: offence should not be confused with harm. — Nigel Warburton

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

The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings. — John Stuart Mill

After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature. — John Stuart Mill

Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion. — John Stuart Mill

It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor. — John Stuart Mill

What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom? — John Stuart Mill

Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind. — John Stuart Mill

With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her. — John Stuart Mill

One person with a belief is worth 99 people who have only interests. — John Stuart Mill

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house. — John Stuart Mill

Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. — John Stuart Mill

When one's ideas are not challenged, one's ability to defend them weakens. — John Stuart Mill

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

Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation. — John Stuart Mill

It is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present. — John Stuart Mill

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

Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas. — John Stuart Mill

It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference about the well-being of others'. — John Stuart Mill

What is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play. — John Stuart Mill

is not to be expected that there should be agreement about the definition of any thing, until there is agreement about the thing itself. — John Stuart Mill

The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest. — John Stuart Mill

So Long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, & live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or gov't. — John Stuart Mill

So true is that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. — John Stuart Mill

Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers. — John Stuart Mill

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides. — John Stuart Mill

There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step. — John Stuart Mill

Proposed Roads to Freedom
In this book Russell weighs the respective advantages and disadvantages of Socialism, Marxism and Syndicalism. — John Stuart Mill

We have had the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice. — John Stuart Mill

The only names of objects which connote nothing are proper names; and these have, strictly speaking, no signification. — John Stuart Mill

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

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

Trade is a social act. — John Stuart Mill

The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. — John Stuart Mill

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. — John Stuart Mill

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit. — John Stuart Mill

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

I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment. — John Stuart Mill

I call myself a liberal - a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions. — John Stuart Mill

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it. — John Stuart Mill

The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought. — John Stuart Mill

Imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the — John Stuart Mill

The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor. — John Stuart Mill

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. — John Stuart Mill

There have been, and may be again, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery. — John Stuart Mill

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them. — John Stuart Mill

It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind's eye closed. — 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

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

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

When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land. — John Stuart Mill

The besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole. — John Stuart Mill