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.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Stuart Mill

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
—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

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

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

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Innovation, Originality

The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
—John Stuart Mill

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

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

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

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 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

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 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

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
—John Stuart Mill

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Welfare, Individuality

On completely popular government: Its superiority in reference to present well-being rests upon two principles, of as universal truth and applicability as any general propositions which can be laid down respecting human affairs. The first is, that the rights and interests of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded, when the person interested is himself able, and habitually disposed, to stand up for them. The second is, that the general prosperity attains a greater height, and is more widely diffused, in proportion to the amount and variety of the personal energies enlisted in promoting it.
—John Stuart Mill

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

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Lawyers, Law

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

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

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Belief

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

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

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

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

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

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 idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.
—John Stuart Mill
Topics: Truth

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

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