The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
JOHN STUART MILLAll 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.
More John Stuart Mill Quotes
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Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
JOHN STUART MILL -
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
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 -
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 -
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
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 -
A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.
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 -
It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.
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 -
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 -
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 -
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
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 -
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
JOHN STUART MILL