Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. John Stuart Mill More Quotes by John Stuart Mill More Quotes From John Stuart Mill A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility. John Stuart Mill impossibility difficulty psychological Induction is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown. John Stuart Mill inference known process The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; type people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. John Stuart Mill numbers mean people Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his toil. John Stuart Mill toil changed men 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. John Stuart Mill atheism views believe 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. John Stuart Mill teaching christian men It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power. John Stuart Mill crush gratitude feelings Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy. John Stuart Mill poetry heard art Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end. John Stuart Mill art-is ends art 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. John Stuart Mill diversity spiritual people Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength. John Stuart Mill perception giving enemy Seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level. John Stuart Mill real self mean I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings John Stuart Mill crush struggle thinking It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible. John Stuart Mill effort age ideas Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company. John Stuart Mill progress kings men Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes; it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses. John Stuart Mill teaching exercise men Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education. John Stuart Mill growth shapes helping Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. John Stuart Mill chance purpose ends Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion. John Stuart Mill atheism facts religion The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind. John Stuart Mill atheism acceptance thinking
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