John Stuart Mill, usually cited as J. S. Mill, was a British philosopher, political economist, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Powerful collection of profoundly inspirational John Stuart Mill quotes on utilitarianism, liberty, democracy, feminism, philosophy, and free speech will challenge the way you think.
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Famous John Stuart Mill Quotes
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
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. John Stuart Mill
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality. John Stuart Mill
After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature. John Stuart Mill
One person with a belief is equal to ninety nine who have only interests. 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
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends. John Stuart Mill
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought. 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
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. John Stuart Mill
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. John Stuart Mill
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. John Stuart Mill
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. John Stuart Mill
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice. John Stuart Mill
As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. John Stuart Mill
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. John Stuart Mill
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. John Stuart Mill
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors. John Stuart Mill
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. John Stuart Mill
The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. John Stuart Mill
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. John Stuart Mill
So true is that unnatural generally means only uncustomary and that everything which is usual appears natural. 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
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. John Stuart Mill
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs. 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
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. John Stuart Mill
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. John Stuart Mill
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. John Stuart Mill
It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. 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
There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone. John Stuart Mill
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.John Stuart Mill
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. John Stuart Mill
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. John Stuart Mill
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. John Stuart Mill
The person 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’s hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been one of the primary sources of progress. John Stuart Mill
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. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. John Stuart Mill
A person whose desires and impulses are his own are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture is said to have a character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own has no character, no more than a steam engine has character. John Stuart Mill
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life. John Stuart Mill
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. 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
No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. John Stuart Mill
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. John Stuart Mill
I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised; and no one can safely pronounce that if women’s nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men’s, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves. John Stuart Mill
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. John Stuart Mill
It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind’s eye closed. John Stuart Mill
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine. John Stuart Mill
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides. John Stuart Mill
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors. John Stuart Mill
To tax, the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors. 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
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds? 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
Society can and does execute its own mandates and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul. John Stuart Mill
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen twentieths of mankind. John Stuart Mill
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement. John Stuart Mill
We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours. John Stuart Mill
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. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. John Stuart Mill
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. John Stuart Mill
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. 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
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
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience. John Stuart Mill
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety nine who have only interests. John Stuart Mill
I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized. 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. John Stuart Mill
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. John Stuart Mill
Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions. John Stuart Mill
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. John Stuart Mill
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life. 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 strongest of all arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. John Stuart Mill
All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient. John Stuart Mill
State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. 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
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. 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
I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go. John Stuart Mill
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. John Stuart Mill
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. John Stuart Mill
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny. John Stuart Mill
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field. John Stuart Mill
All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions. 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
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
If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. 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
