"The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind."
Read quote
28 likes
Quote collection
John Stuart Mill quotes (page 3 of 18)
360 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs."
Read quote
27 likes
"Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way."
Read quote
26 likes
"Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."
Read quote
26 likes
"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."
Read quote
25 likes
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
Read quote
23 likes
"What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs."
Read quote
23 likes
"The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people."
Read quote
22 likes
"Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
Read quote
21 likes
"Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption."
Read quote
17 likes
"The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself."
Read quote
17 likes
"There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy."
Read quote
17 likes
"There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation."
Read quote
16 likes
"Liberty consists in doing what one desires."
Read quote
16 likes
"All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility."
Read quote
15 likes
"... All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas."
Read quote
15 likes
"The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary."
Read quote
15 likes
"History shows that great economic and social forces flow like a tide over communities only half conscious of that which is befalling them. Wise statesmen foresee what time is thus bringing, and try to shape institutions and mold men's thoughts and purposes in accordance with the change that is silently coming on. The unwise are those who bring nothing constructive to the process, and who greatly imperil the future of mankind by leaving great questions to be fought out between ignorant change on one hand and ignorant opposition to change on the other."
Read quote
15 likes
"It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others."
Read quote
15 likes
"Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by which so many of the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to the gradual formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political science."
Read quote
15 likes