Mill, John Stuart

"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."

"Custom is the deadener of human feelings; it is the stumbling-block of improvement."

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

"Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."

"He is a Radical and the philosopher of Radicalism; I am a Liberal and a believer in the principles of constitutional government."

"Persons are not born with desires and impulses, these are created by education."

"The tendency has always been strong in the English people to regard their place of abode as a castle, and most as a kingdom."

"Society has had ample opportunity of trying the experiment of unlimited diversity of opinion, and has nothing to apprehend from trying any length to which consistency requires it to be carried."

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

"He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation."

"Eccentricity has always abounded when and wherever strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained."

"The greatest harm we can do to people is to assume they are what we see and treat them as such."

"Beware of allowing a gap to form between you and your knowledge."

"The worth of human existence is not measured by the mere duration of life, but by its quality."

"As long as men are what they now are, no legislation will be a sufficient means of stopping the increase of pauperism."

"All the political apparatus of the state and government is a machine for keeping the many in subjection to the few."

"It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."

"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."

"Rational conduct is not exclusively either productive of human happiness or destructive of it."

"When society requires to be rebuilt, there is no use in attempting to rebuild it on the old plan."

"The person who experiences and enjoys the most is the person with the most developed understanding."

"He who does anything because it is the custom makes no conscious attempt at justification."

"The evil is not that statute law SOMETIMES fails, but that it always fails unless circumstances are in its favor."

"The human condition is characterized by the faculty of imagining improvements."

"Our morality is but the morality of custom."

"To anyone who is acquainted with actual life, it will appear evident that the greatest and chief good which public institutions can aim at is to increase the general intelligence."

"Willingness to submit to unjust punishment is not morally praiseworthy."

"The same events take place in all ages; but the thinking of thoughtful men varies, and hence the world is always advancing."

"How little it is possible to know of a country that has been visited only in a cursory manner!"

"The greatest good for the greatest number."