John Stuart Mill, FRSE (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was a British philosopher, political economist and civil servant. He was an influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy. He has been called "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century". Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method. Mill was also a Member of Parliament and an important figure in liberal political philosophy.
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“As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
—John Stuart Mill (18061873)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupils individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“No slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is.”
—John Stuart Mill (18061873)
“The miller believes that all the wheat grows so that his mill keeps running.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)