John Stuart Mill Quotes

إن البشر يفقدون تطلعاتهم العالية لأنهم يفقدون أذواقهم الفكرية وذلك بسبب ضيق الوقت أو عدم توفر الفرص السانحة لهم بالتدليل عليها. فيدمنون على اللذات الحسية ليس بسبب أنهم يفضلونها بعد المداولة، بل لأنها هي الوحيدة التي لديهم إمكانية الوصول إليها أو الوحيدة التي يمكن الاستمتاع بها

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.

Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.

Everyone who receives protection from the society owes a return for the benefit.

religion, the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism.

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

إن تسلط العادة هو العائق الذي يقف في كل مكان بوجه التطور الإنساني ،لأنها عداوة لا تنتهي لذلك التوجه نحو استهداف شيء أفضل من التقليدي يسمى وفقا للظروف ، روح الحرية أو روح التقدم أو التطور.

Of all difficulties which impede the progress of thought, and the formation of well-grounded opinions on life and social arrangements, the greatest is now the unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form human character.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

إن القدرة على أسمى المشاعر هي في معظم الطبائع، نبتة رقيقة جداً، وسهلة الفناء، ليس فحسب من خلال التأثيرات السيئة والمعادية لها، بل بسبب نقص بسيط في تغذيتها. وبالنسبة لأغلبية الشبان فإنها تموت إذا ما كانت انشغالاتهم بحكم وضعهم في الحياة التي سخروا لها، والمجتمع الذي وجدوا أنفسهم فيه، لا تساعدهم على الحفاظ على هذه القدرات العالية في حالة اشتغال. إن البشر يفقدون تطلعاتهم العالية لأنهم يفقدون أذواقهم الفكرية وذلك بسبب ضيق الوقت أو عدم توفر الفرص السانحة لهم بالتدليل عليها. فيدمنون على اللذات الحسية ليس بسبب أنهم يفضلونها بعد المداولة، بل لأنها هي الوحيدة التي لديهم إمكانية الوصول إليها أو الوحيدة التي يمكن الاستمتاع بها

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own happiness in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

John Stuart Mill
1806-1873

[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.

أن الثقافة بلا حرية لن تصنع عقلاً واسعاً وحراً

There is no reason that all human existence should be constructed on some one or some small number of patterns. [...] A man cannot get a coat or a pair of boots to fit him, unless they are either made to his measure, or he has a whole warehouseful to choose from: and is it easier to fit him with a life than with a coat, or are human beings more like one another in their whole physical and spiritual conformation than in the shape of their feet?

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.