All quotes

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way

All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that

Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility.

Responsibility is null when nobody knows who is responsible; nor, even when real, can it be divided without being weakened.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

The interest of the people is that there should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on every public act or measure.

There is no act which more imperatively requires to be performed under a strong sense of individual responsibility than the nomination to employments.

One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler can not pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without amending them.

Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights.

If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the necks of those who are kept down by it, this has.

Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it.

The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into submission.

A Sultan's favourite slave has slaves under her, over whom she tyrannizes; but the desirable thing would be that she should neither have slaves nor be a slave.

At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.

I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.

The result was that I gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it.

A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it.

But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.