John Stuart Mill citáty

strana 2

„Svoboda jednoho končí tam, kde začíná svoboda druhého.“

„Jeden člověk, který v něco věří se vyrovná devadesátidevíti, kteří mají pouze zájem.“

„Nejsilnějším lékem na stáří je láska.“

„Naučil jsem se být šťastný tím, že jsem své touhy omezoval, místo abych je uspokojoval.“

„Účelem výchovy je učinit jednotlivce pokud možno způsobilým, aby nejprve založil vlastní štěstí a potom štěstí bytostí jiných.“

„Jediným účelem, pro který se moc může spravedlivě použít proti jakémukoliv členu civilizované společnosti i proti jeho vlastní vůli, je zabránit tomu, aby se ubližovalo jiným. Nikoho nelze plným právem nutit, aby něco konal nebo trpěl proto, že to tak bude pro něho lepší, protože ho to učiní štastnějším, a protože je to - podle mínění jiných - moudré nebo dokonce správné“

„Hlavní příčinou přehlédnutí jsou předem přijaté názory.“

„Nejsilnějším prostředkem proti stárnutí je láska.“

„Láska k moci a láska ke svobodě jsou ve věčném sporu.“

„Tyranie dělá z lidí cyniky.“

„Příčinou poloviny chyb je špatný návyk přestat přemýšlet, když se už věc nezdá být sporná.“

„Manželství je jediné zákonem povolené nevolnictví.“

„Historie je plná faktů dokazujících, že pravda byla umlčena pronásledováním.“

„Lidé si nepřejí být pouze bohatí, chtějí být bohatší než ostatní.“

„Učedník, od něhož nikdy nežádáme nic takového, co vykonat nemůže, nikdy neudělá všechno, co může.“

„Práva a zájmy každého člověka jsou nejlépe hájeny tehdy, když je může hájit sám.“

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”

“I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.”

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

“I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.”

“Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.”

“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”

“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. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.”

“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”

“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.”

“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.”

“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.”

“Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.”

“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”

“I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it.”

“I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of my life not altogether untrue of me.”

“All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.”

“I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.”

“My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "Socratici viri;" justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of self-indulgent sloth. These and other moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contemp. But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.”

“I now saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate. It followed that politics must be a deductive science. It thus appeared, that both Macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in assimilating the method of philosophising in politics to the purely experimental method of chemistry; while the other, though right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causation at all, does not require or admit of any summing-up of effects.”

“I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.”

“[T]he application of algebra to geometry… far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.”

“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”

“Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.”

“What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance.”

“The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.”

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”

“If I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.”