There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.
JOHN STUART MILLAsk yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
More John Stuart Mill Quotes
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As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Human beings are no longer born to their place in life…but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.
JOHN STUART MILL -
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 -
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
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 -
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
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.
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 -
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 -
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 -
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
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 -
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
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.
JOHN STUART MILL -
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Language is the light of the mind.
JOHN STUART MILL -
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
JOHN STUART MILL -
He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.
JOHN STUART MILL -
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.
JOHN STUART MILL -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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