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John Stuart Mill

172 quotes

“The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, and especially of all abstract terms, became in this way enveloped in a mystical base...”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1829 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)
“Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Spirit of the Age, I", Examiner (9 January 1831), p. 20 Full text online
“The remedies for all our diseases will be discovered long after we are dead; and the world will be made a fit place to live in, after the death of most of those by whose exertions it will have been made so. It is to be hoped that those who live in those days will look back with sympathy to their known and unknown benefactors.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary, April 15, 1854, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 668
“We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not set forth his own opinions as the true ones and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in any teacher. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the question be whether his own opinions are the true ones, but whether he is well instructed in those of other people, and, in enforcing his own, states the arguments for all conflicting opinions fairly.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836)
“All students of man and society who possess that first requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its difficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for true, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1840 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Coleridge”. London and Westminster Review. (March 1840)
“A Turk thinks, or used to think (for even Turks are wiser now-a-days), that society would be on a sandbank if women were suffered to walk about the streets with their faces uncovered. Taught by these and many similar examples, I look upon this expression of loosening the foundations of society, unless a person tells in unambiguous terms what he means by it, as a mere bugbear to frighten imbeciles with.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stability of Society (17 August 1850), quoted in Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (eds.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV (1986)
“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485
“The possession and the exercise of political, and among others of electoral, rights, is one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind; and all governments must be regarded as extremely imperfect, until every one who is required to obey the laws, has a voice, or the prospect of a voice, in their enactment and administration.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), p. 22
“That power should be exercised over any portion of mankind without any obligation of consulting them, is only tolerable while they are in an infantine, or a semi-barbarous state. In any civilized condition, power ought never to be exempt from the necessity of appealing to the reason, and recommending itself by motives which justify it to the conscience and feelings, of the governed.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), p. 24
“It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Liberty (1859)
“It is an uphill race, and a race against time, for if the American form of democracy overtakes us first, the majority will no more relax their despotism than a single despot would. But our only chance is to come forward as Liberals, carrying out the democratic idea, not as Conservatives, resisting it.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Henry Fawcett (5 February 1860), quoted in Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (1954), p. 418
“Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds...inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Utilitarianism, 2nd ed. (1864), ch. 2, p. 10
“[T]he application of algebra to geometry... far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) as quoted in 5th ed. (1878) p. 617.
“How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) by James Huneker, p. 367
“It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: J. S. Mill, Dissertations and discussions: political, philosophical, and historical, Volume 2, H. Holt, 1864, p. 11.
“France has done more for even English history than England has.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred, by the accident of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in believing.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: John Stuart Mill, Chapters On Socialism, London, 1879, ‘Introductory’
“Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since reasoning, or inference, the principal subject of logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of words, and in complicated cases can take place in no other way: those who have not a thorough insight into both the signification and purpose of words, will be under chances, amounting almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 11: Cited in Gaines (1976) "Foundations of fuzzy reasoning" in: International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 8(6), p. 623
“As there were black swans, though civilized people had existed for three thousand years on the earth without meeting with them...The uniform experience, therefore, of the inhabitants of the known world, agreeing in a common result, without one known instance of deviation from that result, is not always sufficient to establish a general conclusion.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead...Not that it is solely, or chiefly, to form great thinkers, that freedom of thinking is required. On the contrary, it is as much and even more indispensable to enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..Whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible form of society...”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need not suppose that when power resides in an exclusive class, that class will knowingly and deliberately sacrifice the other classes to themselves: it suffices that, in the absence of its natural defenders, the interest of the excluded is always in danger of being overlooked: and, when looked at, is seen with very different eyes from those of the persons whom it directly concerns.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. ... Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the collective interests of mankind.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an example of what they should.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by the mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in existence.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source