“The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.”
More from John Stuart Mill on Philosophy
“He who let's the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation”
“[T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.”
“His eminence was due to the flatness of the surrounding landscape.”
“He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice.”
“What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.”
“The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.”
“Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“Nothing endures but change.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds...”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Circumstances-what are circumstances? I make circumstances.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?”
Buddha
13 quotes“To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.”