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.
Category Archive: John Stuart Mill
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
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.
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.
All desirable things… are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.