The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar 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.
- Topic: Freedom, Liberty, Society
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from John Stuart Mill
There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
Actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness, wrong as the produce the reverse.
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.
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
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They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.
If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . . I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.
If there is anything in the world a person should fight for, it is freedom to pursue his ideal, because in that is his great opportunity for self-expression, for the unfoldment of the greatest thing possible to him.
You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.
One man thinks himself the master of others but remains more of a slave than they are.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. Men are no superior by reason of the accidents of race and color. The are superior who have the best heart—the best brain.
The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.
To change your mind and to follow him who sets you straight is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.
If we are to achieve richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.