John Stuart Mill
They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.Collection: Motivational
Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.Collection: Government
On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known.Collection: Agnostic
It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.Collection: Christian
The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.Collection: Religious
The great creative individual . . . is capable of more wisdom and virtue than collective man ever can be.Collection: Inspirational
If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up.Collection: Important
It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.Collection: Crush
A people may prefer a free government, but if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers to subvert their institutions, in all these cases they are unfit for liberty.Collection: Men
Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference; the latter of Inference. The truths known by Intuition are the original premisses, from which all others are inferred.Collection: Truth
The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.Collection: Philosophy
The industrial economy which divides society absolutely into two portions, the payers of wages and the receivers of them, the first counted by thousands and the last by millions, is neither fit for, nor capable of, indefinite duration: and the possibility of changing this system for one of combination without dependence, and unity of interest instead of organized hostility, depends altogether upon the future developments of the Partnership principle.Collection: Wisdom
Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.Collection: Restraint
He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights for them I other respects.Collection: Rights
All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.Collection: Humanity