John Stuart Mill Quotes About Morality

Quotes about: Morality

• Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Character, Evil

  "On Liberty". Philosophical work by John Stuart Mill (ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion), 1859.

• To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophical, Perfection, Would Be

  John Stuart Mill (1870). “Utilitarianism”, p.25

• The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophy, Atheism, Principles

• What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Religious, Ideas

  "On Liberty". Philosophical work by John Stuart Mill, 1859.

• Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Lying, Selfish

  John Stuart Mill (1950). “Utilitarianism, liberty, and representative government”

• 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

• The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth.

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophy, Inspire, Intellectual

  John Stuart Mill (2009). “Dissertations and Discussions”, p.201, Cosimo, Inc.

• The moral influence of woman over man is almost always salutary.

  John Stuart Mill

  Men, Morality, Moral

• 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

• There is a very real evil consequent on ascribing supernatural origin to the received maxilms of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them and protects them from being discussed or criticized.

  John Stuart Mill

  Real, Evil, Morality

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