John Stuart Mill quotes - page 6

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant, recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. His writings on liberty, utilitarianism, and social reform shaped modern political and ethical thought. He advocated for individual freedom, women's rights, and expanded democracy. Here are 255 of his quotes:

My father was as well aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best conception they were able to form of perfect goodness.

John Stuart Mill

These considerations did not make us overlook the folly of premature attempts to dispense with the inducements of private interest in social affairs, while no substitute for them has been or can be provided: but we regarded all existing institutions and social arrangements as being (in a phrase I once heard from Austin) "merely provisional," and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Co-operative Societies), which, whether they succeeded or failed, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so.

John Stuart Mill

Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, so there is no place for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist.

John Stuart Mill

The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end.

John Stuart Mill

I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.

John Stuart Mill

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.

John Stuart Mill

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.

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

John Stuart Mill

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.

John Stuart Mill

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

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

John Stuart Mill

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

John Stuart Mill

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

John Stuart Mill

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.

John Stuart Mill