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

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

— John Stuart Mill

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

— John Stuart Mill

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

— John Stuart Mill

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

— John Stuart Mill

“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”

— 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

“The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.”

— John Stuart Mill

“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”

— John Stuart Mill

“The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.”

— John Stuart Mill

“There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.”

— John Stuart Mill

“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.”

— John Stuart Mill

“The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

— 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

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

— 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

“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

“The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.”

— John Stuart Mill

“A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

— 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