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John Stuart Mill

172 quotes

“May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only object, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence?”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]ruly the understandings of the majority of mankind would need to be much better cultivated than has ever yet been the case, before they can be asked to place such reliance in their own power of estimating arguments, as to give up practical principles in which they have been born and bred and which are the basis of much of the existing order of the world, at the first argumentative attack which they are not capable of logically resisting.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the apotheosis of Reason we have substituted that of Instinct; and we call everything instinct which we find in ourselves and for which we cannot trace any rational foundation.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he adoption of this system of inequality never was the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society. It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People are not aware how entirely, in former ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly — for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (1848)
“The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Landlords... grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their own.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young student. I can bear similar testimony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi permissus...”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced, the point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during the years of childhood an amount of knowledge in what are considered the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of manhood.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]y father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[H]e regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies,—belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind,—and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it...”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments—of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue—are complete sceptics in religion...”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many species, including almost every variety of moral type. But the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm (believers rarely have that opportunity), are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I did not know the way in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, causes both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develope themselves only in some single and very limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, in my state of mind, this appearance of superiority to illusion added to the effect which Bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improvement which he did open was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well as to give a definite shape to my aspirations.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Malthus's population principle was quite as much a banner, and a point of union among us, as any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St. David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the before the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. The personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this...”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful to it.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity—that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had obtained some distinction, and felt myself of some importance, before the desire of distinction and of importance had grown into a passion: and little as it was which I had attained, yet having been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, it had made me blasé and indifferent to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to preoccupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.”
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) said by 1873 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source