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
In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.

John Stuart Mill
Strong impulses are but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good may always be made of an energetic nature, than of an indolent and impassive one.

John Stuart Mill
Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being "pushed to an extreme", not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.

John Stuart Mill
In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves.

John Stuart Mill
The maxim is, that whatever can be affirmed (or denied) of a class, may be affirmed (or denied) of everything included in the class. This axiom, supposed to be the basis of the syllogistic theory, is termed by logicians the dictum de omni et nullo.

John Stuart Mill
The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.

John Stuart Mill
If I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.

John Stuart Mill
Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments.

John Stuart Mill
Our conception of the past is not drawn from its own records, but from books written about it, containing not the facts, but a view of the facts which has shaped itself in the mind of somebody of our own or a very recent time.

John Stuart Mill
In almost every act of our perceiving faculties, observation and inference are intimately blended. What we are said to observe is usually a compound result, of which one-tenth may be observation and the remaining nine-tenths inference.

John Stuart Mill
Nature means the sum of all phenomena, together with the causes which produce them; including not only all that happens, but all that is capable of happening.

John Stuart Mill
A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.

John Stuart Mill
Induction is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.

John Stuart Mill
Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.

John Stuart Mill
What is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play.

John Stuart Mill
Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly selected words or phrases have as it were nailed them down and held them fast.

John Stuart Mill
If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a happier or a better population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.

John Stuart Mill
The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows.

John Stuart Mill
Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.

John Stuart Mill
There is a very real evil consequent on ascribing supernatural origin to the received maxilms of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them and protects them from being discussed or criticized.

John Stuart Mill
To account for a law of nature means, and can mean, no more than to assign other laws more general, together with collocations, which laws and collocations being supposed, the partial law follows without any additional supposition.

John Stuart Mill
To mistake money for wealth, is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.

John Stuart Mill
It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.

John Stuart Mill
Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.

John Stuart Mill
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.

John Stuart Mill
A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.

John Stuart Mill
Scientific education, apart from professional objects, is but a preparation for judging rightly of Man, and of his requirements and interests.

John Stuart Mill
It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor.

John Stuart Mill
If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.

John Stuart Mill