That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
Interpretation
The lack of eccentric individuals today signifies a troubling conformity in society.
John Stuart Mill highlights a societal issue where the fear of being different or unconventional discourages individuality. This message signals that the absence of eccentric individuals may lead to a stagnation of thought and creativity, suggesting that embracing uniqueness is vital for progress.
In practice
In a speech about innovation at a tech conference.
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
There should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences. It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
The unseen energy that was once in Shakespeare or Picasso or Galileo or any human form, is also available to all of us. That is because the spirit energy does not die, it simply changes form.
The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creators hand.
It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.
One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.
I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: "Do you like me?
In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.
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