Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

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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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

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Happiness

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Right, Power

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Prejudice, Knowledge

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

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

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 most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Women

A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Change

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

The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known.
John Stuart Mill

Language is the light of the mind.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Language

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

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice,—is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about 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 exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Justice, War

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Truth

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

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

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Wisdom

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do never does what he can do.
John Stuart Mill

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

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

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Opinions

The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Science

To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Understanding

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

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
John Stuart Mill

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of… They are more in need of originality, the less they are conscious of the want.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Innovation, Originality

It would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.
John Stuart Mill
Topics: Virtue

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 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

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