The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
JOHN STUART MILLWhen one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens.
More John Stuart Mill Quotes
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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.
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Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
JOHN STUART MILL -
There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
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In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
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The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
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Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
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Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.
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 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.
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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.
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The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
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Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
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The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
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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.
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.
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Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
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We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.
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In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.
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.
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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The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
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The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
JOHN STUART MILL -
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
JOHN STUART MILL -
Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
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 -
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
JOHN STUART MILL