John Stuart Mill Quotes on Knowledge
Mill's System of Logic (1843) gave Victorian philosophy of science its most ambitious statement. Inductive reasoning is, for Mill, the principal source of all genuine knowledge, including the knowledge of mathematical and logical principles that the rationalist tradition had located in the a priori intellect. The famous five canons of induction — the methods of agreement, difference, joint method, residues, and concomitant variation — supply the systematic analysis of how observed correlations among phenomena can be progressively refined into knowledge of causal laws. The framework grounds Mill's broader empiricist program — the doctrine that the propositions of arithmetic and geometry are very general empirical truths confirmed by all our experience, the criticism of intuitive theories of moral and political knowledge — that the Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) developed at length.
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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“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.