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.
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One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Belief
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
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 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
It is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Opinions
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 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
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Conservatives
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
Language is the light of the mind.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Language
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Happiness
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Individuality
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Opinions, Freedom, Dissent, Accomplishment, Democracy
Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend to only one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Truth
Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
—John Stuart Mill
The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Responsibility
To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Understanding
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
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
—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 only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilisation, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued.
—John Stuart Mill
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Charity
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
Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race, as a remarkable instance of a concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to raise up and carry into practice a moral ideal greatly in advance of its social condition and institutions; so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely inefficacious, and which has left a most sensible, and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Bravery
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
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
—John Stuart Mill
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Science
Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Individuality
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Happiness
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
—John Stuart Mill
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