Phoebe’s Reviews > On Liberty > Status Update

‘We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.’

‘But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it.’

‘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.’

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.’