01c. 1839 ADThe intensest feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is a vapour of water, subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
02c. 1839 AD[T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
03c. 1839 ADBut these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
04c. 1839 ADThey are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
05c. 1839 ADPersons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
06c. 1839 ADStupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
07c. 1839 ADAll students of man and society who possess that first requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its difficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole. It might be plausibly maintained that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied; and that if either could have been made to take the other’s views in addition to its own, little more would have been needed to make its doctrine correct.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
08c. 1839 ADConservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives... I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."John Stuart Mill ( British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 68 )John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
09c. 1839 ADIt also appears to me that when prejudices persist obstinately, it is the fault of nobody so much as of those who make a point of proclaiming them insuperable, as an excuse to themselves for never joining in an attempt to remove them. Any prejudice whatever will be insurmountable if those who do not share it themselves truckle to it, and flatter it, and accept it as a law of nature.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
10c. 1839 ADBad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
11c. 1839 ADI have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
12c. 1839 ADBoth teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
13c. 1839 ADIf there are any persons who contest a received opinion,or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thankthem for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoicethat there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought,if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality ofour convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
14c. 1839 ADNo one but a fool, and only a fool of a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgment that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
15c. 1839 ADHis eminence was due to the flatness of the surrounding landscape.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
17c. 1839 ADThe despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
18c. 1839 ADUnquestionably it is possible to do without happiness it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
19c. 1839 ADAsk yourself whether you are happy and you will cease to be so.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
20c. 1839 ADThe 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.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
21c. 1839 ADWar is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
22c. 1839 ADAs for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
23c. 1839 ADEccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had 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.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
24c. 1839 ADActions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.John Stuart Mill / quote ↗
