[b]John Stuart Mill
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.[/b]
Their bad men in particular.
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
On the other hand, who hasn’t tried that.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.
Talk about a “general description”.
I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative.
Or [of course]: I did not mean that Liberals are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Liberals.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse.
We’ll need a context of course.
In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
Let’s imagine what he might say today.