The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

- John Stuart Mill

The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

- John Stuart Mill

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

- John Stuart Mill

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.

- John Stuart Mill

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

Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

- John Stuart Mill

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.

- John Stuart Mill

No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.

- John Stuart Mill

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.

- John Stuart Mill

We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.

- John Stuart Mill

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

- John Stuart Mill

Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.

- John Stuart Mill

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

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.

- John Stuart Mill

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

- John Stuart Mill

Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.

- John Stuart Mill

All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

- John Stuart Mill

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.

- John Stuart Mill

The person 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.

- John Stuart Mill

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