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To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

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

Experience Forever History Ideas Persecution Truth
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

Action Evil Injury Oneself Person
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
JOHN STUART MILL

Affirmation Correct Debate Intellectual Wrong
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

Marriage Perspective Slave Wife Word
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

Activity Choice Discrimination Faculty Human Mental
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

Errors Opinion Preparation Suffering Thinking Truth
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
JOHN STUART MILL

Desire End Freedom Pain Pleasure
When one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens.
JOHN STUART MILL

Ability Challenge Defend Ideas Weakness
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.
JOHN STUART MILL

Kind Man Oneself Opinion Power Silence
A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
JOHN STUART MILL

Accomplishment Finding Hands Instrument Man Order Purpose State
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.
JOHN STUART MILL

Affair Concern Freedom Himself Person
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.
JOHN STUART MILL

Establishment Moral Opinion Politics Revolution
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
A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.
JOHN STUART MILL

Conviction Feeling Man Raise
Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
JOHN STUART MILL

Desire Liberty Oneself
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
JOHN STUART MILL

Adoption Experience Greatness Movement

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

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To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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