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 MillThe philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.
John Stuart MillThe idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.
John Stuart MillEvery man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.
John Stuart MillThere are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
John Stuart MillHuman existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island of infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor its final destination.
John Stuart Mill