John Stuart Mill Quotes About Justice

On Liberty, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #34901. This sentence follows Mill’s harm-principle formulation and belongs to a political-philosophical argument about the legitimate limits of social and legal interference. It is not a claim that every private action has no effects or obligations toward other people.

On Liberty, Chapter II, Project Gutenberg #34901. Mill’s next argument is epistemic as well as political: suppressing an opinion can deprive everyone of truth or of the clearer understanding created when truth is tested against error.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter II, printed page 79, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill contrasts command-and-obedience relations with equal association and states that society in equality is the normal state toward which improving social relations should move.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter I, printed page 3, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill places the burden of proof on restrictions and unequal privilege, stating that the a priori presumption is in favour of freedom and impartiality.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter I, printed page 48, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill argues that if an activity were truly contrary to women’s nature, legal or social prohibition would be superfluous; the sentence belongs to his case for free development and open competition.

The Subjection of Women (1869), Chapter II, printed page 78, Project Gutenberg #27083. Mill argues that equality of married persons before the law is required for justice to both sides and for marriage to become a school of moral cultivation rather than legal subordination.