The English, of all ranks and classes, are at bottom, in all their feelings, aristocrats. They have some concept of liberty, and set some value on it, but the very idea of equality is strange and offensive to them. They do not dislike to have many people above them as long as they have some below them.
John Stuart MillAll that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
John Stuart MillIf the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a happier or a better population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.
John Stuart MillOf two pleasures, if there be one which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.
John Stuart MillIt is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.
John Stuart MillI confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings
John Stuart Mill