John Stuart Mill Quotes About Belief

Quotes about: Belief

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

  John Stuart Mill

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

• The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.

  John Stuart Mill

  Strong, Fear, Real

  Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill, James Mill, Andrew Findlater, George Grote (1982). “Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind”, Georg Olms Verlag

• What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.

  John Stuart Mill

  Men, Majority, Inability

• The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

  John Stuart Mill

  Atheism, World, Belief

  John Stuart Mill, G. W. Smith (1998). “John Stuart Mill's Social and Political Thought: Freedom”, p.346, Taylor & Francis

• Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.

  John Stuart Mill

  Atheism, Development, Enabling

  John Stuart Mill (1874). “Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism. Being three Essays on Religion. With introductory notice by Helen Taylor”, p.100

• If religious belief be indeed so necessary to mankind, as we are continually assured that it is, there is great reason to lament, that the intellectual grounds of it should require to be backed by moral bribery or subornation of the understanding.

  John Stuart Mill

  Religious, Understanding, Intellectual

  John Stuart Mill (1874). “Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism”, p.71

• All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Men, Self

  John Stuart Mill (1870). “The Subjection of Women”, p.27, Hayes Barton Press

• The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us.

  John Stuart Mill

  Giving, Challenges, Done

  Source: www.usconstitution.net

• To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

  John Stuart Mill

  Thinking, Ninety Nine, Government

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “Considerations on Representative Government”, p.22, John Stuart Mill

• Not only the grounds of the opinion are forgotten in the absence of discussion, but too often the meaning of the opinion itself... Instead of a vivid conception and a living belief, there remain only a few phrases retained by rote; or, if any part, the shell and husk only of the meaning is retained, the finer essence being lost.

  John Stuart Mill

  Essence, Phrases, Shells

  Source: www.usconstitution.net

• It often happens that the universal belief of one age of mankind — a belief from which no one was, nor without an extraordinary effort of genius and courage, could at that time be free — becomes to a subsequent age so palpable an absurdity, that the only difficulty then is to imagine how such a thing can ever have appeared credible.

  John Stuart Mill

  Ideas, Effort, Age

  "Collected Works: Principles of political economy".

• We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct.... When it has come to be a hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively ... there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies ... until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being.

  John Stuart Mill

  Teacher, Real, Feelings

  Source: www.usconstitution.net

• The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.

  John Stuart Mill

  Religious, Tolerance, Religion

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “On Liberty: Mill's Works”, p.17, VM eBooks

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