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
Related Topics
Proportion
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.
More John Stuart Mill Quotes
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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 -
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
JOHN STUART MILL -
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
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 -
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 -
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
JOHN STUART MILL -
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
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 -
When one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens.
JOHN STUART MILL -
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
JOHN STUART MILL -
To bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society.
JOHN STUART MILL -
