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List of John Stuart Mill Quotes
We have put together a list of some of the best Quotes that Written by John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
Total Quotes 360
Every Opinion Which Embodies Somewhat Of The Portion Of Truth Which The Common Opinion Omits, Ought To Be Considered Precious, With Whatever Amount Of Error And Confusion That Truth May Be Blended.
Errors
Confusion
May
If It Were Only That People Have Diversities Of Taste, That Is Reason Enough For Not Attempting To Shape Them All After One Model. But Different Persons Also Require Different Conditions For Their Spiritual Development, And Can No More Exist Healthily In The Same Moral, Than All The Varieties Of Plants Can In The Same Physical, Atmosphere And Climate.
Spiritual
People
Diversity
That A Thing Is Peculiar; Is No Argument For Its Being Blamable; Since The Most Criminal Actions Are To A Being Like Man Not More Unnatural Than Most Of The Virtues.
Men
Criminals
Peculiar
It Can Do Truth No Service To Blind The Fact, Known To All Who Have The Most Ordinary Acquaintance With Literary History, That A Large Portion Of The Noblest And Most Valuable Moral Teaching Has Been The Work Not Only Of Men Who Did Not Know, But Of Men Who Knew And Rejected The Christian Faith.
Christian
Teaching
Men
The Beliefs Which We Have Most Warrant For, Have No Safeguard To Rest On, But A Standing Invitation To The Whole World To Prove Them Unfounded.
Atheism
World
Belief
I Know Tolerably Well What Ireland Was, But Have A Very Imperfect Idea Of What Ireland Is.
Ideas
Imperfect
Wells
Any Participation, Even In The Smallest Public Function, Is Useful.
Government
Function
Participation
He Must Be Able To Hear Them [the Counter Arguments] From Persons Who Actually Believe Them; Who Defend Them In Earnest, And Do Their Very Utmost For Them. He Must Know Them In Their Most Plausible And Persuasive Form; He Must Feel The Whole Force Of The Difficulty Which The True View Of The Subject Has To Encounter And Dispose Of; Else He Will Never Really Possess Himself Of The Portion Of Truth Which Meets And Removes That Difficulty.
Believe
Views
Atheism
A Man Of Clear Ideas Errs Grievously If He Imagines That Whatever Is Seen Confusedly Does Not Exist; It Belongs To Him, When He Meets With Such A Thing, To Dispel The Midst, And Fix The Outlines Of The Vague Form Which Is Looming Through It.
Persistence
Men
Ideas
A [psychological] Difficulty Is Not An Impossibility.
Psychological
Difficulty
Impossibility
Every Established Fact Which Is Too Bad To Admit Of Any Other Defence Is Always Presented To Us As An Injunction Of Religion.
Religion
Atheism
Facts
Political Economy As A Branch Of Science Is Extremely Modern; But The Subject With Which Its Enquiries Are Conversant Has In All Ages Necessarily Constituted One Of The Chief Practical Interests Of Mankind.
Political
Age
Enquiry
I Have A Hundred Times Heard Him Say, That All Ages And Nations Have Represented Their Gods As Wicked, In A Constantly Increasing Progression; That Mankind Have Gone On Adding Trait After Trait Till They Reached The Most Perfect Conception Of Wickedness Which The Human Mind Could Devise, And Have Called This God, And Prostrated Themselves Before It.
Perfect
Mind
Wicked
He Who Cannot By His Labor Suffice For His Own Support Has No Claim To The Privilege Of Helping Himself To The Money Of Others. By Becoming Dependent On The Remaining Members Of The Community For Actual Subsistence, He Abdicates His Claim To Equal Rights For Them I Other Respects.
Rights
Support
Community
When The Land Is Cultivated Entirely By The Spade And No Horses Are Kept, A Cow Is Kept For Every Three Acres Of Land.
Horse
Land
Agriculture
So Natural To Mankind Is Intolerance ... That Religious Freedom Has Hardly Anywhere Been Practically Realized.
Religious
Atheism
Natural
I Well Knew That To Propose Something Which Would Be Called Extreme, Was The True Way Not To Impede But To Facilitate A More Moderate Experiment.
Way
Would Be
Wells
Hitherto It Is Questionable If All The Mechanical Inventions Yet Made Have Lightened The Day's Toil Of Any Human Being. They Have Enabled A Greater Population To Live The Same Life Of Drudgery And Imprisonment, And An Increased Number Of Manufacturers And Others To Make Fortunes. They Have Increased The Comforts Of The Middle Classes. But They Have Not Yet Begun To Effect Those Great Changes In Human Destiny, Which It Is In Their Nature And In Their Futurity To Accomplish.
Destiny
Class
Numbers
The Despotism Of Custom Is On The Wane. We Are Not Content To Know That Things Are; We Ask Whether They Ought To Be.
Despotism
Customs
Ought
The Validity Of All The Inductive Methods Depends On The Assumption That Every Event, Or The Beginning Of Every Phenomenon, Must Have Some Cause; Some Antecedent, Upon The Existence Of Which It Is Invariably And Unconditionally Consequent.
Science
Events
Causes
Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, And His School Of Negative Thinkers, And England (or Rather Scotland) Had The Profoundest Negative Thinker On Record, David Hume: A Man, The Peculiarities Of Whose Mind Qualified Him To Detect Failure Of Proof, And Want Of Logical Consistency, At A Depth Which French Skeptics, With Their Comparatively Feeble Powers Of Analysis And Abstractions Stop Far Short Of, And Which German Subtlety Alone Could Thoroughly Appreciate, Or Hope To Rival.
Religious
School
Men
The Process Of Tracing Regularity In Any Complicated, And At First Sight Confused, Set Of Appearances, Is Necessarily Tentative; We Begin By Making Any Supposition, Even A False One, To See What Consequences Will Follow From It ; And By Observing How These Differ From The Real Phenomena, We Learn What Corrections To Make In Our Assumption.
Confused
Real
Science
Christian Morality (so Called) Has All The Characters Of A Reaction.... In Its Horror Of Sensuality, It Made An Idol Of Asceticism, Which Has Been Gradually Compromised Away Into One Of Legality. It Holds Out The Hope Of Heaven And The Threat Of Hell, As The Appointed And Appropriate Motives To A Virtuous Life - In This Falling Far Below The Best Of The Ancients, And Doing What Lies In It To Give To Human Morality An Essentially Selfish Character.... It Is Essentially A Doctrine Of Passive Obedience; It Inculcates Submission To All Authorities Found Established.
Christian
Lying
Selfish
It Appears, Then, To Be A Condition Of A Genuinely Scientific Hypothesis, That It Be Not Destined Always To Remain An Hypothesis, But Be Certain To Be Either Proved Or Disproved By.. .comparison With Observed Facts.
Science
Destiny
Facts
Born: May 20, 1806
Died: May 8, 1873
Occupation: Philosopher
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