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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

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.
JOHN STUART MILL

Human Invention Light Question
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

Genius Growth Minority Person Preserve Small
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
JOHN STUART MILL

Force Hope Listening Side
The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.
JOHN STUART MILL

Influence Moral Salutation Woman
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

Himself Moral Prevent Purpose Right Willing
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

Development Force Human Live Machine Nature Requirement Tree
One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
JOHN STUART MILL

Belief Equality Interest Person
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
JOHN STUART MILL

Age Dare Independent Man Race Service
The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
JOHN STUART MILL

Force Improvement Liberty People Spirit Willing
Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign.
JOHN STUART MILL

Body Mindset Oneself Sovereign
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

Community Government Interesting Reason Worst
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.
JOHN STUART MILL

Absence Action Happiness Pain Pleasure Proportion Reverse Right
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.
JOHN STUART MILL

Grave Man Moral Remark Woman
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
JOHN STUART MILL

Advancement Custom Despotism Human
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
JOHN STUART MILL

Experience Flavor Life Risk Shelter
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

Freedom Government Harm Law Live Thinking

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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