The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
It is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
All the good of which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.
He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters.
But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.
There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.
Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.
The guesses which serve to give mental unity and wholeness to a chaos of scattered particulars, are accidents which rarely occur to any minds but those abounding in knowledge and disciplined in intellectual combinations.
The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it.
To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.
With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.
Of two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.
In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.
The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.
The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.
The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle.
Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.