Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.
Interpretation
Speaking openly and honestly is beneficial to society, challenging our deeply held beliefs.
John Stuart Mill emphasizes the importance of honest discourse in society, suggesting that individuals who express their thoughts candidly contribute to the greater good by questioning and challenging our most cherished beliefs. Such acts of intellectual bravery help to expose potential flaws in societal norms and encourage critical thinking among the populace.
In practice
In a debate about social issues, one might use this quote to highlight the value of honest expression.
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.
You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard.
By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?
It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.
Sin forsaken is one of the best evidences of sin forgiven.
It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
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