John Stuart Mill Quotes
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 quotes below are attributed to John Stuart Mill, organized by topic.
Browse John Stuart Mill by topic
John Stuart Mill on Death
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“The remedies for all our diseases will be discovered long after we are dead; and the world will be made a fit place to live in, after the death of most of those by whose exertions it will have been made so. It is to be hoped that those who live in those days will look back with sympathy to their known and unknown benefactors.”
Diary, April 15, 1854, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill , Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 668
John Stuart Mill on Freedom
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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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“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.”
Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
John Stuart Mill on Happiness
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“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
Ch. 2
John Stuart Mill on Knowledge
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“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion -
“Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836)”
The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. ¶ The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest lo -
“Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836)”
We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not set forth his own opinions as the true ones and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in any teacher. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the -
“Coleridge”. London and Westminster Review. (March 1840)”
All students of man and society who possess that first requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its difficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for true, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole.
John Stuart Mill on Mind
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“Note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill (1869)”
The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, an
John Stuart Mill on Politics
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.”
John Stuart Mill on Time
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“Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.”
The Spirit of the Age, I", Examiner (9 January 1831), p. 20 Full text online
John Stuart Mill on Truth
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.”
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“We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not set forth his own opinions as the true ones and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in any teacher. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the question be whether his own opinions are the true ones, but whether he is well instructed in those of other people, and, in enforcing his own, states the arguments for all conflicting opinions fairly.”
Civilization," London and Westminster Review (April 1836) -
“All students of man and society who possess that first requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its difficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for true, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole.”
Coleridge”. London and Westminster Review. (March 1840)
John Stuart Mill on Virtue
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Attributed to 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.”
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Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
Things actually not said by John Stuart Mill
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as John Stuart Mill but are in fact from someone else. Did John Stuart Mill say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did John Stuart Mill say this? No.
“A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Also attributed to Thomas Jefferson , this is a modern paraphrase of a statement of Benjamin Franklin : " Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
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Did John Stuart Mill say this? No.
“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
Attributed to John Stuart Mill in The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health , Vol. LXXXV (September 1887), p. 170 (Disputed.)