Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
John Stuart Mill wrote in the 1840s: “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.”
Morgan Housel • The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness
The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.
John Stuart Mill • On Liberty
On Liberty
Mill’s writings can be read as a strenuous attempt to reconcile individual rights with the utilitarian philosophy he inherited from his father and adopted from Bentham. His book On Liberty (1859) is the classic defense of individual freedom in the English-speaking world. Its central principle is that people should be free to do whatever they want,
... See moreMichael J. Sandel • Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
John Stuart Mill, looking back from the end of his life on his youthful sufferings, impossible to draw a line that separates analysis on the one side from feeling on the other and to conclude that only the first side is relevant to thinking.
Alan Jacobs • How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
John Stuart Mill held that government oppression is generally less burdensome than the tyranny of friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens.
Timur Kuran • Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification
“ most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...”
— H.L. Mencken