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The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

John Stuart Mill

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
There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
JOHN STUART MILL

Circle Government Imagination Step
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England
JOHN STUART MILL

History Liberty Portion Poverty Struggle
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

Economy Income Industry Neighbor Save Tax
Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign.
JOHN STUART MILL

Body Mindset Oneself Sovereign
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
JOHN STUART MILL

Average General Kind Man World
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
JOHN STUART MILL

Desire End Freedom Pain Pleasure
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

Certain Discussion Fake Opinion Refuse Silence
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
JOHN STUART MILL

Home Meaning Personal Realize Truth
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
JOHN STUART MILL

Errors Fatal Mistake Reason Tendency Thinking
Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.
JOHN STUART MILL

Brief Complex Luck Photography
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
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
JOHN STUART MILL

Atmosphere Breathe Freedom Genius
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
JOHN STUART MILL

Expression Literature Science Study Teaching Thinking Young
When one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens.
JOHN STUART MILL

Ability Challenge Defend Ideas Weakness
Human beings are no longer born to their place in life…but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.
JOHN STUART MILL

Achievement Appearance Born Chance Desire Freedom Human Life Place

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

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The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

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