John Stuart Mill Quotes about Atheism

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It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.

It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.

John Stuart Mill

Atheism, May, Positive Atheism

John Stuart Mill (1874). “Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism”, p.73

My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?

John Stuart Mill

Father, Atheism, Taught

It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor.

John Stuart Mill

Integrity, Honor, Atheism

John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.173, Hackett Publishing

There is always need of persons not only to discover new truths, and point out when what were once truths are true no longer, but also to commence new practices, and set the example of more enlightened conduct, and better taste and sense in human life.

John Stuart Mill

Practice, Atheism, Example

John Stuart Mill (1962). “Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government”

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle.

John Stuart Mill

Philosophy, Atheism, Principles

Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.

John Stuart Mill

Atheism, Development, Enabling

John Stuart Mill (1874). “Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. Being three Essays on Religion. With introductory notice by Helen Taylor”, p.100

The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind.

John Stuart Mill

Acceptance, Thinking, Atheism

John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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

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

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