Quotes from John Stuart Mill

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.

A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.

With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.

The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.

The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.

All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good.

Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes; it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses.

I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.

A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species.

Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all?

That a thing is peculiar; is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.

To mistake money for wealth, is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.

One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.

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.

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.

If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.

Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.

The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.