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One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
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11 quotes by John Stuart Mill · clear filters
One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.
The interest of the people is that there should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on every public act or measure.
A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.
Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
A Sultan's favourite slave has slaves under her, over whom she tyrannizes; but the desirable thing would be that she should neither have slaves nor be a slave.
Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights.
A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into submission.
Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it.
If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the necks of those who are kept down by it, this has.