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John Stuart Mill Quotes - Page 14

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A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which

A man of clear ideas errs grievously if he imagines that whatever is seen confusedly does not exist; it belongs to him, when he meets with such a thing, to dispel the midst, and fix the outlines of the vague form which is looming through it.

John Stuart Mill
Persistence, Men, Ideas
John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.65, John Wiley & Sons

Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.

John Stuart Mill
Religion, Atheism, Facts
John Stuart Mill (2015). “On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays”, p.452, OUP Oxford

The average condition of the people improving or deteriorating, depends upon whether population is advancing faster than improvement, or improvement than population.

John Stuart Mill
Average, People, Population
1848 Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.

John Stuart Mill
Ideas, Imperfect, Wells
JOHN STUART MILL, JOHN M. ROBSON, JACK. STILLINGER (1972). “COLLECTED WORKS OF JOHN STUART MILL.”

The feeling of a direct responsibility of the individual to God is almost wholly a creation of Protestantism.

John Stuart Mill
Responsibility, Feelings, Creation
John Stuart Mill (1866). “Auguste Comte and Positivism”, p.112

So natural to mankind is intolerance ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized.

John Stuart Mill
Religious, Atheism, Natural
John Stuart Mill, Charles W. Elliott, Patrick Hayden (2004). “On Liberty”, p.8, Barnes & Noble Publishing

It must be granted that in every syllogism, considered as an argument to prove the conclusion, there is a petitio principii. When we say, All men are mortal Socrates is a man therefore Socrates is mortal; it is unanswerably urged by the adversaries of the syllogistic theory, that the proposition, Socrates is mortal.

John Stuart Mill
Men, Logic, Granted
John Stuart Mill (1862). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.207

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.

John Stuart Mill
Progress, Population, Culture
1848 Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

John Stuart Mill
Christian, Religious, Ideas
"On Liberty". Philosophical work by John Stuart Mill, 1859.

There is a very real evil consequent on ascribing supernatural origin to the received maxilms of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them and protects them from being discussed or criticized.

John Stuart Mill
Real, Evil, Morality

Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival.

John Stuart Mill
Religious, School, Men
John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.55, John Wiley & Sons

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.

John Stuart Mill
Religious, Tolerance, Religion
John Stuart Mill (2016). “On Liberty: Mill's Works”, p.17, VM eBooks

He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

John Stuart Mill
Believe, Views, Atheism

If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model. But different persons also require different conditions for their spiritual development, and can no more exist healthily in the same moral, than all the varieties of plants can in the same physical, atmosphere and climate.

John Stuart Mill
Spiritual, People, Diversity
John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.203, Hackett Publishing

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

John Stuart Mill
Atheism, World, Belief
John Stuart Mill, G. W. Smith (1998). “John Stuart Mill's Social and Political Thought: Freedom”, p.346, Taylor & Francis

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.

John Stuart Mill
Christian, Lying, Selfish
John Stuart Mill (1950). “Utilitarianism, liberty, and representative government”

If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.

John Stuart Mill
Law, Cases, Accounts
1865 Auguste Comte and Positivism.

The maxim is, that whatever can be affirmed (or denied) of a class, may be affirmed (or denied) of everything included in the class. This axiom, supposed to be the basis of the syllogistic theory, is termed by logicians the dictum de omni et nullo.

John Stuart Mill
Science, Class, Nomenclature
John Stuart Mill (1858). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.117

The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.

John Stuart Mill
Dream, Real, Successful
John Stuart Mill (2016). “Considerations on Representative Government”, p.82, John Stuart Mill

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative; we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.

John Stuart Mill
Confused, Real, Science
John Stuart Mill (1856). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.16

That a thing is peculiar; is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.

John Stuart Mill
Men, Criminals, Peculiar

Induction is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.

John Stuart Mill
Inference, Process, Known
John Stuart Mill (2016). “A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive: Mill's Works”, p.289, VM eBooks

The validity of all the Inductive Methods depends on the assumption that every event, or the beginning of every phenomenon, must have some cause; some antecedent, upon the existence of which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent.

John Stuart Mill
Science, Events, Causes
John Stuart Mill (1846). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.337

I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.

John Stuart Mill
Way, Would Be, Wells
John Stuart Mill (2015). “Autobiography John Stuart Mill: Top Biography”, p.133, 谷月社

The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.

John Stuart Mill
Despotism, Customs, Ought

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