John Stuart Mill Quotes

• To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.

  John Stuart Mill

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• 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 skeptics in religion.

  John Stuart Mill

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• The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

  John Stuart Mill

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• 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. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

  John Stuart Mill

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• The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.

  John Stuart Mill

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• The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

  John Stuart Mill

• The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

  John Stuart Mill

• The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.

  John Stuart Mill

• Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.

  John Stuart Mill

• Liberty consists in doing what one desires.

  John Stuart Mill

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• But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

  John Stuart Mill

• A philosopher is there to disturb the indolence of the mind.

  John Stuart Mill

• No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of per.

  John Stuart Mill

• Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.

  John Stuart Mill

• Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

  John Stuart Mill

• All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

  John Stuart Mill

• Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.

  John Stuart Mill

• Complete moral tolerance is possible only when men have become completely indifferent to each other — that is to say, when society is at an end.

  John Stuart Mill

• Desires or fears for themselves – their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest.

  John Stuart Mill

• A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

  John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill (100)

Birth:	20th May, 1806
Death:	8th May, 1873
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Philosopher, Politician

About

John Stuart Mill was born in Pentonville, London, England. He was a British philosopher, economist, politician, essayist and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory and political economy. He studied at the University College London. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham. His career as a colonial administrator at the British East India Company spanned from when he was 17 years old in 1823 until 1858, when the Company was abolished in favor of direct rule by the British crown over India. A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the first Member of Parliament (for City and Westminster from 1865-1868) to call for women's suffrage. Between the years 1865 and 1868 Mill served as Lord Rector of the University of St. Andrews. He was godfather to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He wrote several books include: A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy, On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women (essay), and Three essays on religion. He married Harriet Taylor in 1851.

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