The quote database

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way

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

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility.

One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler can not pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without amending them.

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.

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.

Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without being weakened.

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.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

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.

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.

Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights.

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.

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.

The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means?

At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.

The result was that I gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it.

But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end.