John Stuart Mill

"Were the people in the habit of associating for purposes of discussion, they would acquire the mental habits required for the conduct of public affairs."

"The source of all improvement is the effort which each man makes for his own culture."

"The worth of any public measure is to be judged by the distinctness and precision with which it is urged and expressed."

"A government which does not improve the character of its people is not worth preserving."

"No society in which liberty is prized can afford to disregard the importance of the dissenter and the rebel."

"The suppression of heretical opinions is a presumption of the infallibility of the present generation and its age."

"In every state of society, some persons acquire more of the command over human beings than is good for them."

"I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being."

"It is the privilege and proper condition of a human being, arrived at the maturity of his faculties, to use and interpret experience in his own way."

"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, or impede their efforts to obtain it."

"If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we certainly know, be true."

"He is not a great man who is not a great philosopher; and he is not a great philosopher who is not capable of great things."

"The capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance."

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

"The very principle of justice I proceed to establish."

"The demand for justice is the demand of one human being upon another, for the observance of some custom or some rule."

"It is by the aid of these three things, Authority, Habit, and Education, that order is maintained in the world."

"The greatest amount of net happiness can be obtained by an intelligent pursuit of one's own interest and that of those with whom one comes into contact."

"There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life."

"The problem of the world in which we live is not political or social, but rather spiritual."

"A change would do you good; he is a state of confinement."

"The customs of the society into which one is born constitute the atmosphere of one's life and thought."

"Hardly anything will be done at all if everybody waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault with what he has done."

"The human being needs encouragement and assistance in the development of his powers."

"It is an error to confess that one's conception of justice differs from that of the community."

"There are few things so directly and palpably injurious to human virtue as the habit of falsehood."

"A person cannot in the nature of things, be compelled to happiness."

"The person who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty; the person who never stops learning is always young."

"The good of the whole requires that every part should, if possible, be as good as it can be."

"I have always thought that the great dividing line between the strong man and the weak is that the former makes demands on himself and the latter makes demands on others."