QUOTES: John Stuart Mill On Ethics & War.

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TOP: TOP: John Stuart Mill, frontal shot.

Hi All,

I had today off and one of the activities I enjoy most on my days off is: reading. Reading is good for the soul and it invigorates the mind... and I strongly feel that any kind of reading benefits the reader... even tabloid trash rags, People Magazine, and that like. Even that sort of written drivel keeps words flowing through the mind. However, to really stimulate the mind, one has to read the writings of intelligent people, not just professors and philosophers, but the people that made a difference and their time and resolved to share their thoughts. One such person, whose writings I often return to is John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher, Political economist, and a Member of Parliament among his many other accomplishments.

Here are a few of his quotes that really make me think...

John Stuart Mill on the military:

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

John Stuart Mill on the freedom:

"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest."

John Stuart Mill on the conformity:

"In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."

John Stuart Mill helped to foster and develop a philosophy known as utilitarianism, which I don't feel I've ever really understood despite much study, but that's another topic altogether...

TOP: John Stuart Mill, profile shot.

To learn more about John Stuart Mill, please check out this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

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