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Happiness
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Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
-John Stuart Mill
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Individuality
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But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.
-John Stuart Mill
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That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
-John Stuart Mill
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What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called.
-John Stuart Mill
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Industry
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The opening of a foreign trade, by making them acquainted with new objects, or tempting them by the easier acquisition of things which they had not previously thought attainable, sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people: inducing those who were satisfied with scanty comforts and little work, to work harder for the gratification of their new tastes, and even to save, and accumulate capital, for the still more complete satisfaction of those tastes at a future time.
-John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (Book 3, Chapter 17)
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Innovation
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All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
-John Stuart Mill
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Originality is the one thing unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
-John Stuart Mill
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Justice
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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.
-John Stuart Mill
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Knowledge
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He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
-John Stuart Mill
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Law
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All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
-John Stuart Mill
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Masses
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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.
-John Stuart Mill
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Mediocrity
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The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
-John Stuart Mill
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Politics
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A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
-John Stuart Mill
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Power
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The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
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Prejudice
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We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
-John Stuart Mill
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Security
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A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.
-John Stuart Mill
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Self Respect
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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.
-John Stuart Mill
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State
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The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it -- a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.
-John Stuart Mill
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Thought
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No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
-John Stuart Mill
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Truth
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The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.
-John Stuart Mill
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But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter 2: Of the liberty of thought and discussion, 1859
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Understanding
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To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
-John Stuart Mill
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War
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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice,
-John Stuart Mill, "First published in Fraser"
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Wisdom
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That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
-John Stuart Mill
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Women
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The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
-John Stuart Mill
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Books by and about John Stuart Mill