John Stuart Mill Quotes

• The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.

  John Stuart Mill

• The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

  John Stuart Mill

• The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.

  John Stuart Mill

• All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

  John Stuart Mill

• The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.

  John Stuart Mill

• Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

  John Stuart Mill

• That miscellaneous collection of a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the public.

  John Stuart Mill

• It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.

  John Stuart Mill

• The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.

  John Stuart Mill

• They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.

  John Stuart Mill

• There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.

  John Stuart Mill

• A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.

  John Stuart Mill

• The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

  John Stuart Mill

• The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.

  John Stuart Mill

• Conversancy with Hegel tends to deprave one’s intellect.

  John Stuart Mill

• A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.

  John Stuart Mill

• The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.

  John Stuart Mill

• As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

  John Stuart Mill

• Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race, as a remarkable instance of a concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of its social condition and institutions; so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely inefficacious, and which has left a most sensible, and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times.

  John Stuart Mill

• All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

  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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