Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people – less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character.
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
That a thing is peculiar; is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.
Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.
The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.
And it is not difficult to show, by abundant instances, that to extend the bounds of what may be called moral police, until it encroaches on the most unquestionably legitimate liberty of the individual, is one of the most universal of all human propensities.
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.
The validity of all the Inductive Methods depends on the assumption that every event, or the beginning of every phenomenon, must have some cause; some antecedent, upon the existence of which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent.
It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind’s eye closed.
We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.
Men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.
As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.