John Stuart Mill Quotes

No one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his.

Foresight of phenomenon and power over them depend on knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seem good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

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

Language is evidently one of the principle instruments or helps of thought; and any imperfection in the instrument, or in the mode of employing it, is confessedly liable, still more than in almost any other art, to confuse and impede the process, and destroy all ground of confidence in the result.

But the true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they freely concede to every one else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one; and preferring, whenever possible, the society of those with whom leading and following can be alternate and reciprocal.

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

It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.

But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty.

The assumption that we are infallible can we justify the suppression of opinions we think false. Ages are as fallible as individuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd.

It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.

Then are seen the cases, so frequent in this age of the world as almost to form the majority, in which the creed remains as it were outside the mind, incrusting and petrifying it again all other influences addressed to the higher parts of our nature; manifesting its power by not suffering any fresh and living conviction to get in, but itself doing nothing for the mind or heart except standing sentinel over them to keep them vacant

On the average, a person who cares for other people, for his country, or for mankind, is a happier man than one who does not; but of what use is it to preach this doctrine to a man who cares for nothing but his own ease, or his own pocket? He cannot care for other people if he would. It is like preaching to the worm who crawls on the ground, how much better it would be for him if he were an eagle.

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally found person to rediscover it, until some of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.