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John Stuart Mill

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    John Stuart Mill

    A being who can create a race of men devoid of real freedom and inevitably foredoomed to be sinners, and then punish them for being what he has made them, may be omnipotent and various other things, but he is not what the English language has always intended by the adjective holy.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A cultivated mind is one to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.

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    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.

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    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

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    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All free communities have both been more exempt from social injustice and crime, and have attained more brilliant prosperity, than any others, or than they themselves after they have lost their freedom.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

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    John Stuart Mill

    ... All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas.

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    John Stuart Mill

    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.

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    John Stuart Mill

    All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.

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    John Stuart Mill

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

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    John Stuart Mill

    Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

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    John Stuart Mill

    [A] man and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what everybody does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

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    John Stuart Mill

    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

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    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

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

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    John Stuart Mill

    And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.

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    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.

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    John Stuart Mill

    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it

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    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.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.

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    John Stuart Mill

    A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end.

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    John Stuart Mill

    As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

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    John Stuart Mill

    Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.

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    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.