John Stuart Mill Quotes

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.

One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.

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.

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?

The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

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.

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.

Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.

The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising

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.

Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

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.

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.

The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.

As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

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

The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.

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

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.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.