Phoebe’s Reviews > On Liberty > Status Update

‘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.’

‘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.’