John Stuart Mill quotes

“All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.”

— John Stuart Mill

“As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.”

— John Stuart Mill

“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.”

— 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

“The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.”

— John Stuart Mill

“We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.”

— John Stuart Mill

“Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.”

— John Stuart Mill

“All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.”

— John Stuart Mill

“All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.”

— 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

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

— John Stuart Mill

“No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.”

— John Stuart Mill

“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.”

— John Stuart Mill

“Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.”

— John Stuart Mill

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

— John Stuart Mill

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

— John Stuart Mill

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

— 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.”

— John Stuart Mill