#j.s. mill

[tournevole]

La guerre est une chose hideuse, mais non la plus hideuse : l'état de décadence morale et patriotique consistant à penser que rien ne vaut une guerre est bien pire.

J.S. Mill 

[wisdomfish]

All right, Christianity will do you good—a great deal more good than you ever wanted or expected. And the first bit of good it will do you is to hammer into your head (you won't enjoy that) the fact that what you have hitherto called "good"-all that about "leading a decent life" and "being kind"—isn't quite the magnificent and all-important affair you supposed. It will teach you that in fact you can't be "good" (not for twenty-four hours) on your own moral efforts. And then it will teach you that even if you were, you still wouldn't have achieved the purpose for which you were created. Mere morality is not the end of life. You were made for something quite different from that. J. S. Mill and Confucius (Socrates was much nearer the reality) simply didn't know what life is about. The people who keep on asking if they can't lead a decent life without Christ, don't know what life is about; if they did they would know that "a decent life" is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be remade. All the rabbit in us is to disappear—the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.

C.S. Lewis

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

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.

from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill 

[linguisticentries]

A person whose desires and impulses are his own — an expression of his nature as shaped and modified by his culture — is said to have character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own has no character, no more than a steam engine has character.

J.S. Mill, On Liberty

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion.

from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill 

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.

from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill 

[is-the-fish-happy]

Reading J.S. Mill's "On Liberty" be like

*How am I supposed to disavow something so unspecific. Dangerous with the reins of government, Wow. *I'll wait here and see whichever way the wind will blow. *Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for. *It's full of contradictions. So is independence.

[worrywrite]

But if we may be excused the seeming affectation of the antithesis, we should say that eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard.

John Stuart Mill, 1833, What is Poetry?