TuesdayFeb 10, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
What is contrary to womens nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play.
They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.
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 a sufficient warrant.
The great creative individual ... is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
One person with a belief is a social power equal to 99 who have only interests.
Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
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 it contained. That so few dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
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.
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
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.
The guesses which serve to give mental unity and wholeness to a chaos of scattered particulars, are accidents which rarely occur to any minds but those abounding in knowledge and disciplined in intellectual combinations.
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.
The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.
Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments.
The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.
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.
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.
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals.
Induction is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
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.
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
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 tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.
Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interest.
The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
The Conservatives...being by the law of their existence the stupidest party.
I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.
Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics in religion.
All that makes existence valuable to anyone, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
Language is the light of the mind.
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplace, but which all experience refutes.
Style is the perfection of good sense.
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
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 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.
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
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