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‘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.’

On the initiative on an individual genius: ‘All he can claim is, freedom to point out the way. The power of compelling others into it, is not only inconsistent with the freedom and development of all the rest, but corrupting the strong man himself.’

‘At present individuals are lost in the crowd. In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world.’

‘Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.’

‘I feel there is something ominous in his calm, and shall not forget this night…’

‘One whose desires and impulses are not his own, has no character, no more than a steam-engine has a character.’

‘It is not because men’s desires are strong they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.’

‘Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.’

‘He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.’

‘The human faculties of perception, judgement, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice.’

‘The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it.’

‘If Christians would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they should themselves be just to infidelity.’

Christian morality ‘is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience.’

The ideal of Christian morality is ‘negative rather than positive; […] Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts ‘thou shalt not’ predominantes unduly over ‘thou shalt’.

‘If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality or our convictions, to do so with much greater labour for ourselves.’

‘The deep slumber of a decided opinion.’ - Sir Arthur Helps

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

‘The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own.’

‘However true [a person’s opinion] may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.’

‘Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.’

‘Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion.’

‘In this age the quiet surface of routine is as often ruffled by attempts to resuscitate past evils, as to introduce new benefits.’

‘To discover to the world something which deeply concerns it, and of which it was previously ignorant; to prove to it that it had been mistaken on some vital point of temporal or spiritual interest, is as important a service as a human being can render to his fellow-creatures,’