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On Liberty

Book by John Stuart Mill · 8 quotes · Liberty, Opinion, Humans

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On Liberty Quotes

“First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”

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Book:On Liberty
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“Mesmo no que se faz por prazer o conformismo é a primeira coisa em que se pensa; as pessoas desejam em grupo; exercem a escolha apenas entre coisas comummente feitas; fogem da peculiaridade de gosto e da excentricidade de conduta como de crimes; até que, à força de não seguirem a própria natureza, não têm mais natureza a seguir; as suas capacidades humanas mirram e morrem; tornam-se incapazes de desejos fortes e de prazeres naturais; e não apresentam, em regra, opiniões e sentimentos brotados do íntimo, propriamente seus. É essa, entretanto, a condição desejável da natureza humana?”

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Book:On Liberty
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“The greater part of the world has, properly speaking, no history, because the despotism of Custom is complete. This is the case over the whole East. Custom is there, in all things, the final appeal; justice and right mean conformity to custom; the argument of custom no one, unless some tyrant intoxicated with power, thinks of resisting. And we see the result. Those nations must once have had originality; they did not start out of the ground populous, lettered, and versed in many of the arts of life; they made themselves all this, and were then the greatest and most powerful nations in the world. What are they now? The subjects or dependants of tribes whose forefathers wandered in the forests when theirs had magnificent palaces and gorgeous temples, but over whom custom exercised only a divided rule with liberty and progress.”

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Book:On Liberty
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“How will the remaining portion of the community like to have the amusements that shall be permitted to them regulated by the religious and moral sentiments of the stricter Calvinists and Methodists? Would they not, with considerable peremptoriness, desire these intrusively pious members of society to mind their own business? This is precisely what should be said to every government and every public, who have the pretension that no person shall enjoy any pleasure which they think wrong.”

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Book:On Liberty
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