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 MILLThere are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
More John Stuart Mill Quotes
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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 -
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.
JOHN STUART MILL -
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
JOHN STUART MILL -
Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
JOHN STUART MILL -
To mistake money for wealth, is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.
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 -
Language is the light of the mind.
JOHN STUART MILL -
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 -
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
JOHN STUART MILL -
As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.
JOHN STUART MILL -
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 -
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
JOHN STUART MILL -
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 -
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