Character Quotes by John Stuart Mill

The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.

— John Stuart Mill

The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.

— John Stuart Mill

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

Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.

— John Stuart Mill

Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?

— John Stuart Mill

In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.

— John Stuart Mill

Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.

— John Stuart Mill

There is a very real evil consequent on ascribing supernatural origin to the received maxilms of morality. That origin consecrates the whole…

— John Stuart Mill

It is useful while mankind is imperfect that there should be different opinions, so that there should be different experiments of living,…

— John Stuart Mill

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally…

— John Stuart Mill

That a thing is peculiar; is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like…

— 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…

— John Stuart Mill

The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely…

— John Stuart Mill

It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments…

— John Stuart Mill

“Yet the same gradual decay to which, after a certain age, all the language of psychology seems liable, has been at work…

— John Stuart Mill

The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore…

— John Stuart Mill

All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear…

— John Stuart Mill

The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary…

— John Stuart Mill

“Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out…

— John Stuart Mill

Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far…

— John Stuart Mill

All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite…

— John Stuart Mill

Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others…

— John Stuart Mill

“His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius: he…

— John Stuart Mill

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely…

— John Stuart Mill

“It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a…

— John Stuart Mill

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction… In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism,…

— John Stuart Mill

“My father’s moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the Socratici viri; justice, temperance (to which he gave a very…

— John Stuart Mill

“Protection, therefore, against tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and…

— John Stuart Mill

“It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform…

— John Stuart Mill

The doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual's mind, and given likewise…

— John Stuart Mill

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal…

— John Stuart Mill

Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be…

— John Stuart Mill

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of…

— John Stuart Mill

the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing…

— John Stuart Mill

A person whose desires and impulses are his own—are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified…

— John Stuart Mill

... what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the conviction that we have real power over the…

— John Stuart Mill

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as…

— John Stuart Mill

What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not…

— John Stuart Mill

A state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the…

— John Stuart Mill

Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful…

— John Stuart Mill