John Stuart Mill Quotes

Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.

The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.

Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end.

It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.

So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.

Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.

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.

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

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.

A cultivated mind is one to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties.

I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.

The bad workmen who form the majority of the operatives in many branches of industry are decidedly of opinion that bad workmen ought to receive the same wages as good.

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.

Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.

The moment one asks himself whether he is happy, he ceases to be so.

So true is that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.

A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species.

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.

The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.

Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

A person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.

Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his toil.

It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.

Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.

The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is that all the argument is on one side.

The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it.

Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all?

Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?

I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.

The successful conduct of an industrial enterprise requires two quite distinct qualifications: fidelity and zeal.

...there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.

Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.

Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals.

The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.

A [psychological] difficulty is not an impossibility.

The average condition of the people improving or deteriorating, depends upon whether population is advancing faster than improvement, or improvement than population.

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.

Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.

What is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play.

The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.

Trade is a social act.

Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments.

If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.

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.

What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?

Induction is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.

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.

I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.