Mahsa’s Reviews > On Liberty > Status Update

A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can be accomplished; and that the perfection of the machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people; and the spirit of liberty, in so far as it resists such attempts, may ally itself [] temporarily with the opponents of improvement; but the only unfailing [] source of improvement is liberty, since by it there are as many possible independent centers of improvement as there are individuals.

Even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics, in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truth is, that all the argument is on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on the balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.

It is this [social] stigma which is really effective, and so effective is it that the profession of opinions which are under the ban of society is much less common in England, than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those which incur risk of judicial punishment.

…[social] opinion, on this subject, is as efficacious as law; men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.

“Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action.”

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each as seems good to the rest.

The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes, would like them to act.

“But, in political and philosophical theories, as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation.”