John Stuart Mill Quotes

When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am.

Only dumb people are happy.

Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

People who don't see their nature and imagine they can practice thoughtlessness all the time are lairs and fools.

It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.

Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.

If there is no intelligence in the universe, then the universe has created something greater than itself-for it has created you and me.

It is a fool's privilege to laugh at an intelligent man.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

In certain countries, people seem to be think that three asses together make one intelligent person. However, that is completely wrong. Several asses in concreto make the ass in abstracto and that is a most terrifying animal.

A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

Nonsense! The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.

You want to be as smart as you can about being stupid.

The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity.

When an intelligent man reaches the point of inviting self-explanation and offers surrendering the key to his heart, he is assuredly riding a drunken horse.

What, then, is the basic difference between today's computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to seebut not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern--a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.

The fool is not the man who merely does foolish things. The fool is the man who does not know enough to cash in on his foolishness.

If you are a meditator, as your meditation goes on becoming more and more luminous, your intelligence will be growing to the last breath of your life. Not only that, even after the last breath your intelligence will continue to grow - because you are not going to die, only your body will be dying. And the body has nothing to do with intelligence, mind has nothing to do with intelligence. Intelligence is the quality of your awareness - more aware, more intelligent. And if you are totally aware, you are as intelligent as this whole existence is.

This is the epitaph I want on my tomb: Here lies one of the most intelligent animals who ever appeared on the face of the earth.

Meditation means getting out of the mind, looking at the mind from the outside. That's exactly the meaning of the word 'ecstasy': to stand out. To stand out of the mind makes you ecstatic, brings bliss to you. And great intelligence is released. When you are identified with the mind you cannot be very intelligent because you become identified with an instrument, you become confined by the instrument and its limitations. And you are unlimited - you are consciousness.

Kira, the highest thing in man is not his god. It's that in him which knows the reverence due a god. And you, Kira, are my highest reverence.

There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state. -(from "The Bicentennial Man) story)