John Stuart Mill Quotes on Knowledge
John Stuart Mill was a 19th-century British philosopher and political economist, the most influential English-language thinker of the Victorian era. This page collects quotes attributed to John Stuart Mill on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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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 -
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion -
Attributed to John Stuart Mill:
“All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”
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“Diary, April 15, 1854, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill , Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 668”
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. -
“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 -
“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) -
“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.