John Stuart Mill

The 'self-regarding' actions are those which primarily and directly affect only the agent himself.

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.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.

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

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.

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.

That 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.

The government of a country by a mere numerical majority, is a thing which cannot be permanent.

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.

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 other people, under the pretext that the affairs of other people are his own concerns.

The subjection of women is an evil, and a hindrance to human improvement.

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.

The only freedom which consists in doing what one desires, is a freedom which, if not qualified by other considerations, is inconsistent with the good of society.

The great difficulty in the way of the progress of any reform is always not the 'difficulty of the thing itself,' but the difficulty of getting people to believe in the difficulty of the thing itself.

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

Individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise.

Every man who says frankly and without cant, what he thinks, will be in some way a benefactor to his age.

The tendency of all changes of a progressive kind, is to give increased ascendancy to the comparatively uninstructed many.