John Stuart Mill Quotes

The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.

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.

[The utilitarian standard] is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it.

The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.

There have been, and may be again, great individual thinkers, in a general atmosphere of mental slavery.

The whole strength and value, then, of human judgment, depending on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong, reliance can be placed on it only when the means of setting it right are kept constantly at hand. In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for, being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers — knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter — he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

ولكن متى أصبحت العقيدة تقليدا وراثيا وصار تلقيها عملا سلبيا لا ايجابيا ولم يعد هناك من دافع يحفز الناس إلى اجهاد الفكر فيما تثيره من المشاكل فانهم يجنحون تدريجيا اما الي نسيانها برمتها أو الاكتفاء بالموافقة عليها موافقة عمياء كأن التسليم بها من غير مناقشة يغني عن وجوب ادراكها والتحقق من صحتها بالتجربة والاختبار ويظل هذا شأنها حتى تنفصل عن قلوب اصحابها ، وحينئذ تظهر تلك الحالة الشائعة فنرى العقيدة قد أطبقت على عقل صاحبها كانها غشاء سميك يدفع سائر المؤثرات الخارجية عن الاتصال بمداركه العالية.وينحصر دورها في منع غيرها من العقائد الجديدة الحيوية دون الاتصال به والتأثير فيه، وفي الوقت نفسه لا تعطي العقل أو القلب شيئا من نوره

Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character.

Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and 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.

All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.

I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes necessary too.

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.