Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
Search Quotes Search Sages Search Chapters

John Stuart Mill

1806 – 1873 CE

One of the most influential thinkers in history, Mill learned Greek at 3 years old, studied Euclid and Latin at 8, Plato at 10, logic and Aristotle at 12, Adam Smith and political economy at 13, chemistry and zoology at 14, and by 20 was suicidal only to be saved by the poetry and inspiration of William Wordsworth. He promoted individual freedom over state control, economic democracy over capitalism, the environment and quality of life over unlimited growth, taxing unearned income high and earned income not at all. He linked freedom with self-improvement, worked to end slavery, and was one of the first in his time to advocate equality for women.

Eras

Unlisted Sources

On Liberty (1859)​

On Liberty, 1859

Representative Government

Quotes by John Stuart Mill (22 quotes)

“a State which dwarfs its men… will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

Chapters: 17. True Leaders

Themes: Competition

Comments: Click to comment

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

Themes: Opinion

Comments: Click to comment

“The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.”

Chapters: 78. Water

Comments: Click to comment

“The ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty or supreme controlling power is vested in the entire aggregate of the community.”

Themes: Democracy Power

Comments: Click to comment

“Not only a right but a duty, voting should not have any more to do with personal wishes than when making a decision on a jury. If not able to rise above self-interest, a person is unfit to vote.”

Themes: Democracy

Comments: Click to comment

“Any, even unintentional, deviation from truth... keeps back civilization, virtue, everything on which human happiness on the largest scale depends.”

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Comments: Click to comment

“All human beings have the same interest in good government. Gender is as entirely irrelevant to political rights as differences in height or hair color.”

from Representative Government

Comments: Click to comment

“There is hardly a single point of excellence belonging to human character, which is not decidedly repugnant to the untutored feelings of human nature.”

Themes: Perseverance

Comments: Click to comment

“In the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.”

from On Liberty, 1859

Comments: Click to comment

“His book is a kind of encyclopedia of the thoughts of the ancients on the whole field of education and culture; and I have retained through life many valuable ideas which I can distinctly trace to my reading of him…”

Comments: Click to comment

“With what a salutary shock did the paradoxes of Rousseau explode like bombshells in the midst of those lost in admiration of what is called civilization, of the marvels of modern science. Dislocating the compact mass of one-sided opinion, and forcing its elements to recombine in a better form and with additional ingredients. Rousseau's doctrine has floated down the stream of opinion... the superior worth of simplicity, the enervating and demoralizing effect of the trammels and hypocrisies of artificial society... ideas which have never been entirely absent from cultivated minds since Rousseau wrote; and they will in time produce their due effect”

from On Liberty (1859)​

Comments: Click to comment

“It is questionable if all he mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.”

Themes: Technology

Comments: Click to comment

“It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind.”

Themes: Socialism

Comments: Click to comment

“That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often become the height of wisdom in the next.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The struggle between liberty and authority is the most conspicuous feature in the history of... Greece, Rome, and England.”

from On Liberty (1859)​

Comments: Click to comment

“Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of prevailing opinion; against the tendency of society to impose its own... rules of conduct on those who dissent from them”

from On Liberty (1859)​

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Comments: Click to comment

“The despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement... He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.”

Themes: Culture

Comments: Click to comment

“One of the mistakes most often committed—and which are the sources of the greatest practical errors in human affairs—is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas.”

Comments: Click to comment

“Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”

from On Liberty (1859)

Comments: Click to comment

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

Comments: Click to comment

Quotes about John Stuart Mill (1 quotes)

“Although Lincoln may be the most quoted American of all time, I believe that John Stuart Mill is the writer most quoted by other writers.”

George Seldes 1890 – 1995 CE
Pioneering investigative journalist and champion of the exposé
from The Great Quotations (1960)

Comments: Click to comment

Comments (0)