John Stuart Mill Quotes
There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy.
Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. John W. Parker and Son, 1859, ch. 2.
He was announcing that a lecturer Kevin Barrett would not be fired from the University. Barrett had taken the position with his students that the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center could not have been done by a handful of terrorists and it must have done by or with the complicity and help of forces inside the United States government. There had been outrage throughout the country with demands by many politicians for his ouster. The University did not bend to the political pressure even in the case where there was such an outrageous and incorrect view.
Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
John Stuart Mill, usually cited as J. S. Mill, was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century", he conceived of liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.
