John Stuart Mill Quotes

• Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

  John Stuart Mill

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Happiness

• 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

• If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a nec.

  John Stuart Mill

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Civilization

• 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

  Tags in Liberty

• 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

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

  John Stuart Mill

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in World

• 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

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.

Related Authors

• Henry George
• Jean Guitton
• Walker Percy
• Meister Eckhart
• Maurice Merleau Ponty
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Albert Schweitzer
• Robin George Collingwood
• Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th December

Births

• 1948 - Barbara Mandrell
• 1876 - Muhammad Ali Jinnah
• 1975 - Rob Mariano
• 1924 - Rod Serling
• 1945 - Noel Redding

Deaths

• 2000 - Willard Van Orman Quine
• 1962 - Warren R. Austin
• 1676 - Sir Matthew Hale
• 1935 - Paul Bourget
• 1635 - Samuel De Champlain