 The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. And a state which postpones the interest of their mental expansion and elevation to a little more of an administrative skill, of that semblance of which practice gives in the details of business, a state which dwarves its men in order that they may be more docile instruments in it’s hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished, and that the perfection of 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.
John Stuart Mill
Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption."
John Stuart Mill
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If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a co-ordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilization, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued, and the adjustment of the boundaries between it and social control would present no extraordinary difficulty. But the evil is, that individual spontaneity is hardly recognised by the common modes of thinking, as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard on its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind.
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
John Stuart Mill
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.
John Stuart Mill
On Liberty (1859)
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