Humans Quotes by John Stuart Mill

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.

— John Stuart Mill

There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.

— John Stuart Mill

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He…

— John Stuart Mill

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

— John Stuart Mill

It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind's…

— John Stuart Mill

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever…

— John Stuart Mill

Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is…

— John Stuart Mill

The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings

— John Stuart Mill

In the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part…

— John Stuart Mill

I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state…

— 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

Such are the differences among human beings in their sources of pleasure, their susceptibilities of pain, and the operation on them of…

— John Stuart Mill

The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the whole world…

— John Stuart Mill

There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true…

— John Stuart Mill

The legal subordination of one sex to another - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human…

— 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

“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it,…

— 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

Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike. A man cannot get a coat or a pair…

— John Stuart Mill

Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of…

— John Stuart Mill

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as…

— John Stuart Mill

Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have…

— John Stuart Mill

We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension…

— 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

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

Human beings are no longer born to their place in life...but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as…

— John Stuart Mill

But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but…

— John Stuart Mill

“The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor…

— 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

Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he…

— 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

I have a hundred times heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly…

— John Stuart Mill

And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police,…

— John Stuart Mill

To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that…

— John Stuart Mill

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which…

— John Stuart Mill

There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it…

— John Stuart Mill

It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other…

— 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 part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be…

— John Stuart Mill

The triumph of the Confederacy... would be a victory for the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of…

— John Stuart Mill