John Stuart Mill Quotes

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.

The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where there's no trouble. I think idlers are generally seen as potentially dangerous because they're asking questions.

A portion of the multitude must ever be coerced.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.

I was the law and order.

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.

One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

Today there's law and order in everything. You can't beat anybody for nothing. If you do beat anyone, it's got to be for the sake of order.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

The priest accustoms the child to the idea of law, to make it obey better what he calls the "divine law," and the lawyer prates of divine law, that the civil law may be the better obeyed.

Since all people do not do their duty and some, on the contrary, commit injustices, for the sake of keeping order in society, injustices and all enterprises against this order must be repressed: which was possible only through authority given to some over others, and which made government necessary.

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it...People need somebody to watch over them.... Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

Governmental power is the faculty to beat into submission all those who would dare to disobey the orders issued by the authorities. … Every governmental action is backed by constables, prison guards, and executioners. However beneficial a governmental action may appear, it is ultimately made possible only by the government's power to compel its subjects to do what many of them would not do if they were not threatened by the police and the penal courts.

Whatever the rules are, we have to follow them. I have no problem with it.

Obey; this may be right; but beware of reverence.... Government is nothing but regulated force; force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade; the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.

Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates honesty.

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

Influence is not government.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.

It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.

The most powerful men were those who most effectively used the power of adult competence to enforce childish agreements.

We have one authority and one law and everyone has the responsibility to follow that law and that authority.