John Stuart Mill

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.

The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.

All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.

Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.