Quotes from John Stuart Mill

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.

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

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.

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 mind, the individual is sovereign.

The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.

Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.

The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.

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.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.

Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.

The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.

What is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play.

Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments.

Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

The strongest of all arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place.