Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible.
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.
A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.
To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.
Co-operation, like other difficult things, can be learned only by practice: and to be capable of it in great things, a people must be gradually trained to it in small. Now the whole course of advancing civilization is a series of such training.
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
... All ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas.
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.
The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
History shows that great economic and social forces flow like a tide over communities only half conscious of that which is befalling them. Wise statesmen foresee what time is thus bringing, and try to shape institutions and mold men's thoughts and purposes in accordance with the change that is silently coming on. The unwise are those who bring nothing constructive to the process, and who greatly imperil the future of mankind by leaving great questions to be fought out between ignorant change on one hand and ignorant opposition to change on the other.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.
The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny.
It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.
Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend to only one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.
Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.
A man 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.
There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.
Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.
A cultivated mind is one to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties.
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all?
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.
... the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.
In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.
the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.
Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
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 sufficient warrant.
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.
The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising
Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious.
Lord, enlighten thou our enemies. Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers: we are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom; their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.
He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.
In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves.
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
When one's ideas are not challenged, one's ability to defend them weakens.
To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller, is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbors.
War 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.
Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.
Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
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.
A being who can create a race of men devoid of real freedom and inevitably foredoomed to be sinners, and then punish them for being what he has made them, may be omnipotent and various other things, but he is not what the English language has always intended by the adjective holy.
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
Stupidity 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.
In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.
Truth emerges from the clash of adverse ideas.
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
So Long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, & live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or gov't.
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.
Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them.
Language is the light of the mind
The legal subordination of one sex to another - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.
One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
Persons 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.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, if that be his occupation, but not by teaching him how to make shoes; it does so by the mental exercise it gives, and the habits it impresses.
Trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of any goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principal, comes within the jurisdiction of society.
He who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion
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.
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
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.
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
Human beings are no longer born to their place in life...but are free to employ their faculties and such favorable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them as desirable.
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.
...to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.
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.
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.
A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.
The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.
Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.
As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.
To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
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.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
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.
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.
The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.
A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.
