John Stuart Mill Quotes

253 quotes in 2870 categories

• ... the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.
• Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly…
• The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ...…
• Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are…
• Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but…
• Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by…
• War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth…
• ... what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our…
• The United States is no more a Christian nation because most of its citizens are Christians than it is a 'white' nation because most of…
• To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality
• The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but…
• The guesses which serve to give mental unity and wholeness to a chaos of scattered particulars, are accidents which rarely occur to any minds but…
• The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most…
• The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
• ...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.
• Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.
• Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.
• Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political…
• It is useful while mankind is imperfect that there should be different opinions, so that there should be different experiments of living, that free scope…
• It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference about the well-being of others'.

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