John Stuart Mill (1806–73) was an English philosopher and economist. The most prominent British thinker of the 19th century, he was the founding father of liberal thought. He is known for his writings on logic and scientific methodology and his voluminous essays on social and political life.
Born in Pentonville, Middlesex, Mill was an intelligent child; he never attended school or university. He was educated privately by his father, the Scottish philosopher and economist James Mill. James Mill was also an associate of Jeremy Bentham, the Scottish utilitarian philosopher and legalist. John Stuart was converted to Benthamite utilitarianism at the age of 15 but later humanized utilitarianism by disregarding its egoistic psychology and the mechanical view of pleasure.
After canceling the study of law, Mill worked for the East India Company 1823–58, ultimately rising to the position of head of the examiner’s office. During this time, he wrote for periodicals and published A System of Logic (1843) and Principles of Political Economy (1848,) which influenced English radical thought. A System of Logic ran through many editions, establishing Mill’s philosophical reputation and greatly influencing John Venn, John Neville Keynes, Gottlob Frege, and Bertrand Russell (who was Mill’s godson “in a secular sense,”) mainly in its treatment of induction.
Mill is best known for his political and moral works, particularly On Liberty (1859,) which argued for the importance of individual freedom, and Utilitarianism (1863,) which extensively developed Bentham’s theory. In Considerations on Representative Government (1861,) Mill endorsed democratic participation, but only under strict conditions designed to defend the position of the virtuous élite. In Subjection of Women (1869) Mill defended the rights of women on equal terms with men—a landmark in the history of feminist writing.
Mill served as an Independent Member of Parliament 1865–68, where he campaigned for radical measures such as women’s suffrage. After his retirement, he spent much time in Avignon, France, where his wife Harriet Taylor (and co-author of On Liberty) was buried, and where he died. His famous Autobiography was published the year of his death.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Stuart Mill
The bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Work
Thus, a people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.
—John Stuart Mill
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for injury.
—John Stuart Mill
Language is the light of the mind.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Language
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Thought
The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Responsibility
The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. Advice, instruction, persuasion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good, are the only measures by which society can justifiably express its dislike or disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.
—John Stuart Mill
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Service
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Government
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
—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 the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Individuality
The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Custom, Habits
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Freedom
All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Law, Lawyers
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Bureaucracy
The opening of a foreign trade, by making them acquainted with new objects, or tempting them by the easier acquisition of things which they had not previously thought attainable, sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people: inducing those who were satisfied with scanty comforts and little work, to work harder for the gratification of their new tastes, and even to save, and accumulate capital, for the still more complete satisfaction of those tastes at a future time.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Industry
What a country wants to make it richer is never consumption, but production. Where there is the latter, we may be sure that there is no want of the former. To produce, implies that the producer de_sires to consume; why else should he give himself useless labor? He may not wish to consume what he himself produces, but his motive for producing and selling is the desire to buy. Therefore, if the producers generally produce and sell more and more, they certainly also buy more and more.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Consumerism
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.
—John Stuart Mill
When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government.
—John Stuart Mill
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Conservatives
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Knowledge, Prejudice
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Prejudice
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Politicians, Politics
Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Tolerance
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence, is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and The Mind individual is sovereign.
—John Stuart Mill
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Mind
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
Topics: Self Respect, Self-respect
There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Excellence
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
Topics: Security
The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Women
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