38 quotes found
“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.”
“Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it profe...”
“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”
“Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject o...”
“The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal...”
“How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists...”
“All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions andmodes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A gen...”
“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be ...”
“Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.”
“The assumption that we are infallible can we justify the suppression of opinions we think false. Ages are as fallible as individuals, every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have ...”
“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. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs a...”
“The beliefs which we have the most warrant for have no safeguard, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.”
“[T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.”
“But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the lif...”
“They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in the sense of that living ...”
“Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow.”
“Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.”
“If there are any persons who contest a received opinion,or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thankthem for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoicethat there is some o...”
