John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873
John Stuart Mill was a 19th-century British philosopher and political economist, the most influential English-language thinker of the Victorian era. He refined and defended the utilitarian ethics of Jeremy Bentham in his 1863 work Utilitarianism, while On Liberty, published in 1859, gave classical liberal political theory one of its definitive formulations through the harm principle. The Subjection of Women, written with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill and published in 1869, argued for the legal and political equality of women on principled rather than sentimental grounds. He made significant contributions to logic, the philosophy of science, and political economy, and served briefly as a Member of Parliament. Mill's empiricism and inductivism extended the British empiricist tradition into the modern era.
Key facts
- Nationality
- British
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Utilitarianism, Empiricism
Selected quotes
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
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Attributed to 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.”