John Stuart Mill Quotes

323 Sourced Quotes

To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow creatures.

John Stuart Mill
The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.

John Stuart Mill
A person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.

John Stuart Mill
Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.

John Stuart Mill
If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilisation, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued.

John Stuart Mill
There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy.

John Stuart Mill
Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.

John Stuart Mill
Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.

John Stuart Mill
A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.

John Stuart Mill
The bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good.

John Stuart Mill
The successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal.

John Stuart Mill
Neither is it a small advantage of mathematical studies, even in their poorest and most meagre form, that they at least habituate the mind to resolve a train of reasoning into steps, and make sure of each step before advancing to another.

John Stuart Mill
This is what writers mean when they say that the notion of cause involves the idea of necessity. If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things.

John Stuart Mill
Trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of any goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principal, comes within the jurisdiction of society.

John Stuart Mill
All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.

John Stuart Mill
The hypothesis, by suggesting observations and experiments, puts us upon the road to that independent evidence if it be really attainable; and till it be attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a suspicion.

John Stuart Mill
If religious belief be indeed so necessary to mankind, as we are continually assured that it is, there is great reason to lament, that the intellectual grounds of it should require to be backed by moral bribery or subornation of the understanding.

John Stuart Mill
Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of different physical and moral agencies, that unless there is a corresponding diversity in their modes of life, they neither obtain their fair share of happiness, nor grow up to the mental, moral, and aesthetic stature of which their nature is capable.

John Stuart Mill
Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.

John Stuart Mill
Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.

John Stuart Mill
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.

John Stuart Mill
The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

John Stuart Mill
A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it

John Stuart Mill
He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights for them I other respects.

John Stuart Mill
Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.

John Stuart Mill
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.

John Stuart Mill
In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.

John Stuart Mill
A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

John Stuart Mill
A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species...

John Stuart Mill
The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.

John Stuart Mill