John Stuart Mill Quotes

A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous.

The act of feeling what you believe other people feel is morally corosive.... If we want to be good and caring people, if we want to make the world a better place, then we are better off withouit empathy.

Nothing can be truly great which is not right.

For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

We either accept weaknesses in good people or we have to tear pages out of the Bible.

Then, in the next place, we must know that every being which is endowed with reason, and transgresses its statutes and limitations, is undoubtedly involved in sin by swerving from rectitude and justice.

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

I feel it's in people's nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.

I would not hold that we must judge by the favorable or adverse result alone whether an undertaking was just or unjust.

We need people willing to do things because they are doing what is right, not because some powerful trade association wants it done.

There’s nothing more important than people’s conscience and there’s nothing that needs more protection.

I do not believe with the Rochefoucaults and the Montaignes that fourteen out of fifteen men are rogues. I believe a great abatement from that proportion may be made in favor of general honesty.

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality

There are times … when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.