John Stuart Mill



John Stuart Mill

First published Thu Jan 3, 2002; substantive revision Tue Jul 10, 2007 (Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator, was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. His views are of continuing significance, and are generally recognized to be among the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and of a liberal political view of society and culture. The overall aim of his philosophy is to develop a positive view of the universe and the place of humans in it, one which contributes to the progress of human knowledge, individual freedom and human well-being. His views are not entirely original, having their roots in the British empiricism of John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, and in the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. But he gave them a new depth, and his formulations were sufficiently articulate to gain for them a continuing influence among a broad public.

(Quotations from accessed 05/07/2008)

“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.”

“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.”

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

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others.”

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

“Men do not desire merely to be rich, but to be richer than other men”

“That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time”

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so”

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

“What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.”

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

“I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.”

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

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

“That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next”

“In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.”

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”

“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called”

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

“Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained.”

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”

“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.”

“Language is the light of the mind”

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

“Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption”

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”

“Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.”

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