The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
Interpretation
Universities should focus on developing well-rounded individuals rather than just vocational training.
John Stuart Mill emphasizes that the primary role of universities extends beyond equipping students with technical skills for specific professions. Instead, it's about nurturing capable, well-rounded individuals who possess critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and cultural knowledge, preparing them for life's broader challenges and contributions to society.
In practice
In a graduation speech to highlight the importance of holistic education.
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.
Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
We have a large public that is very ignorant about public affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans
The best solution to income inequality is providing a high-quality education for everybody. In our highly technological, globalized economy, people without education will not be able to improve their economic situation.
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a neglected or misdirected directed child may live to blight and blast mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing volume till they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.
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