John Stuart Mill Quotes

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realised, until personal experience has brought it home

The happiness which they meant was not a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.

There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone

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.

If civilization has got the better of barbarism when barbarism had the world to itself, it is too much to profess to be afraid lest barbarism, after having been fairly got under, should revive and conquer civilization. A civilization that can thus succumb to its vanquished enemy, must first have become so degenerate, that neither its appointed priests and teachers, nor anybody else, has the capacity, or will take the trouble, to stand up for it. If this be so, the sooner such a civilization receives notice to quit, the better. It can only go on from bad to worse, until destroyed and regenerated (like the Western Empire) by energetic barbarians.

Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.

To those who have neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health.

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

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.

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. 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.

It is safe to say that the
knowledge men can acquire of women, even as they have
been and are — never mind what they could be — is wretchedly
incomplete and superficial, and that it always will be so until
women themselves have told all that they have to tell.

It is an adherent condition of human affairs that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out.

این ادّعا که طبیعت دو جنس آن‌ها را با وظایف و جایگاه کنونی‌شان انطباق می‌دهد و این وظایف را برای آنان مناسب می‌سازد، نیز فایده‌ای در بر ندارد. من با تکیه بر عقل سلیم و سرشت ذهن بشر، به هیچ روی نمی‌توانم بپذیرم که کسی طبیعت این یا آن جنس را بشناسد، و یا اصول‍ا شناخت طبیعت آن‌ها امکان‌پذیر باشد. طبیعت این دو، مادام که مناسبات کنونی را با هم دارند، قابل شناخت نیست.
‎اگر مردان در جامعه‌ای بدون زن، و زنان در جامعه‌ای بدون مرد به‌سر برده بودند، و یا اگر جامعه‌ای شکل گرفته بود که در آن زنان زیر سلطه‌ی مردان نبودند، آن‌گاه می‌توانستیم درباره‌ی تفاوت‌های ذهنی و اخل‍اقی‌ای سخن بگوییم که احتمال‍ا از طبیعت آنان سرچشمه می‌گیرند. آن‌چه را امروز طبیعت زنانه می‌نامند، چیزی یک‌سره تصنّعی‌‌ست، زیرا محصول سرکوب در بعضی جهات و تشویق و ترغیب در جهاتی دیگر است.

Have intercourse with females, acquire wealth.

To see the futurity of the species has always been the privilege of the intellectual elite, or of those who have learnt from them; to have the feelings of that futurity has been the distinction, and usually the martyrdom, of a still rare elite. Institutions, books, education, society, all go on training human beings for the old, long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming.