John stuart mill quotes

John stuart mill died
John stuart mill theory of utilitarianism
John stuart mill theory

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Mill credited his lover, Harriet Taylor, as the co-creator of his best-known works.Illustration by Ralph Steadman

It is a hard thing, being right about everything all the time. Nobody likes a know-it-all, and we wait for the moment when the know-it-all is wrong to insist that he never really knew anything in the first place. The know-it-all, far from living in smug superiority, has the burden of being right the next time, too. Certainly no one has ever been so right about so many things so much of the time as John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth-century English philosopher, politician, and know-it-all nonpareil who is the subject of a fine new biography by the British journalist Richard Reeves, “John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand” (Overlook; $40). The book’s subtitle, meant to be excitingly commercial, is ill chosen; a firebrand should flame and then die out, while Mill burned for half a century with a steady heat so well regulated that it continues to warm his causes today—“Victorian Low-Simmering Hot Plate” might be closer to it.

Mill believed in complete equality between t

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John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was a leading figure in nineteenth-century intellectual life. He contributed to the fields of logic, economics, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Today, he is best known for his related defenses of utilitarianism and liberalism.

Mill’s rise to prominence was not an accident. Born near London, in Pentonville, England, he was the eldest son of James Mill, an intellectual and reformer closely associated with Jeremy Bentham. Bentham and Mill were the foremost members of a group called the Philosophical Radicals who were united by their commitment to Bentham’s utilitarianism as the basis for political reform. Together, the two devised a rigorous program of education designed to make young Mill a suitable heir to the utilitarian tradition. Home-schooled, he began his study of ancient Greek at three years of age, and Latin at eight. Mill was precocious, and was publishing articles defending his inherited doctrine by his early teens. At seventeen, he entered employment at the East India Company, where his father also worked. He continued working fo

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John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

John Stuart Mill, c.1870 ©Mill was a philosopher, political economist and social reformer who had a huge impact on 19th century thought.

John Stuart Mill was born in London on 20 May 1806. His father was James Mill, a Scottish philosopher who gave his son an intensive education, beginning with the study of Greek at the age of three. His father was friendly with Jeremy Bentham, whose utilitarian philosophy was a huge influence on Mill.

In 1822, Mill was given a job in the examiner's office of the East India Company, where his father also worked. He was employed by the company for more than 30 years, eventually becoming head of his department, but his job allowed him plenty of time for writing.

At the age of 21, Mill suffered a nervous breakdown. He turned to poetry for consolation, particularly that of William Wordsworth. He also began to shape his own philosophical views. In his writing, Mill championed individual liberty against the authority of the state. He believed that an action was right provided it maximised the greatest happiness of