Status Updates From Sobre a Liberdade

‘Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it.’

‘It is only in the earlier stages that any stand can be successfully made against the encroachment’ of Individuality.

‘The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hinderance to human advancement’

‘There is no reason that all human existence should be constructed on some one or some small number of patterns.’

Mill stresses the need of individual eccentricity to counter the tyranny of opinion, and argues that the lack of eccentric characters in contemporary society ‘marks the chief danger of the time’.

‘In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.’