Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free speech but object to their being “pushed to an extreme”, not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.
The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.
A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There could be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress.
There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government.
Any society which is not improving is deteriorating, and the more so the closer and more familiar it is. Even a really superior man almost always begins to deteriorate when he is habitually king of his company.
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.
The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.
Whatever helps to shape the human being – to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not – is part of his education.
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.
Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it?
It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.
Art is the employent of the powers of nature for an end.
So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.
The ne plus ultra of wickedness is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor.
Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.