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Quotes from John Stuart Mill

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race
~ John Stuart Mill
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
~ 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 war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than 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.
~ John Stuart Mill
One person with a belief is a social power equal to 99 who have only interests.
~ John Stuart Mill
One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
~ John Stuart Mill
To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
~ John Stuart Mill
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
~ John Stuart Mill
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 in silencing mankind
~ John Stuart Mill
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
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
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
~ John Stuart Mill
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one--if he had the power--would be justified in silencing mankind.
~ 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 moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations [marriage] is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation.
~ John Stuart Mill
It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.
~ John Stuart Mill
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
~ 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
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
~ John Stuart Mill
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
~ John Stuart Mill
The social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual to man, that… he never conceives himself otherwise than as a member of a body.
~ John Stuart Mill
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
~ John Stuart Mill
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
~ John Stuart Mill
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
~ John Stuart Mill
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
~ John Stuart Mill