Aug 10, 2021
Liberal Arts Blog — John Stuart Mill (1806–1873): Quotes Most Worth Remembering
Liberal Arts Blog — Tuesday is the Joy of Literature, Language, Religion, and Culture Day
Today’s Topic: John Stuart Mill (1806–1873): Quotes Most Worth Remembering
“Of too many books there is no end,” wrote the author of Ecclesiastes more than two millennia ago. Long before the printing press and pdfs. The problem of excess information has been around for a very, very long time. Triage is essential. So, specifically, what is most worth remembering about John Stuart Mill? Today, some favorite quotes. What are yours? Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
HOW GOOD PEOPLE EMPOWER BAD PEOPLE
1. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
2. “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.”
3. “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 a war, is much worse.”
NB: “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, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about 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 exertions of better men than himself. 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.”
THE MORAL DUTY TO UNDERSTAND THE OTHER SIDE
1. “He who knows only his own side of the case 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… “
2. “Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations.”
3. “He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
NB: “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.”
THE PRIMACY OF FREEDOM OF THE INDIVIDUAL, THE VALUE OF ECCENTRICITY AND THE “CLEARER PERCEPTION AND LIVELIER IMPRESSION OF TRUTH”
1. “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary 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.”
2. “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. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
3. “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.”
NB: “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.”
ADDENDUM: the need for balance, the power of emotions and the need for temperance
1. “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”
2. “So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.”
3. “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
John Stuart Mill Quotes (Author of On Liberty)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
A LINK TO THE LAST THREE YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to words, language, literature, religion, culture. Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to Words, Language, Literature (eg. quotes, poetry, vocabulary) that you have not yet shared.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
