Quotes by John Stuart Mill

J.S. Mill denounced the legal subjection of women as “wrong in itself” and as “one of the chief hindrances to human improvement” (1869)

J.S. Mill’s great principle was that “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (1859)

J.S. Mill in a speech before parliament denounced the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the use of flogging in Ireland, saying that those who ordered this “deserved flogging as much as any of those who were flogged by his orders” (1866)

J.S. Mill was convinced he was living in a time when he would experience an explosion of classical liberal reform because “the spirit of the age” had dramatically changed (1831)

J.S. Mill spoke in Parliament in favour of granting women the right to vote, to have “a voice in determining who shall be their rulers” (1866)

J.S. Mill in “The Subjection of Women” argued that every form of oppression seems perfectly natural to those who live under it (1869)

John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion (1866)

John Stuart Mill on the need for limited government and political rights to prevent the “king of the vultures” and his “minor harpies” in the government from preying on the people (1859)

John Stuart Mill uses an analogy with the removal of protective duties and bounties in trade to urge a similar “Free Trade” between the sexes (1869)

John Stuart Mill discusses the origins of the state whereby the “productive class” seeks protection from one “member of the predatory class” in order to gain some security of property (1848)

John Stuart Mill on “the sacred right of insurrection” (1862)

Mill on the dangers of the state turning men into “docile instruments” of its will (1859)

J.S. Mill on the wife as the “actual bondservant of her husband” in the 19th century (1869)

John Stuart Mill on the “religion of humanity” (c. 1858)