John Stuart Mill

"The cultivation of the understanding and the enlargement of the imagination is the chief object of a good education."

"Liberty means responsibility; that is why most men dread it."

"There is no such thing as absolute justice; justice is always relative."

"The love of truth and the attempt to discover it are the only motives that can inspire a great reformer."

"Complete lives require a broad range of human capabilities to flourish fully."

"The person who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He might as well dispense with the human faculty of choice."

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally ignorant of the opposite side, he has no ground for preferring either opinion."

"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called."

"The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it."

"Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

"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."

"All good things which exist are the fruits of originality."

"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."

"The occasion is often the spur to the exertion of our noblest qualities."

"Society has expended fully as much effort in the suppression of nonconformity as in promoting it."

"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."

"The tyranny of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement."

"In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service."

"Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness."

"The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves."

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary 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."

"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has 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."

"A cultivated mind finds in the mistakes and absurdities of others an inexhaustible source of amusement."

"The highest and best use of intelligence is to perceive that we do not truly know."

"Mental education is the cultivator of the conscience, the maker of principles."

"Having said that utility is the ultimate appeal of ethical judgments, it may now be asked, what is the standard of utility?"

"To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality."

"Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."

"The most important of all our relations is that between ourselves and the circumstances of our position."