The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
Interpretation
Customs often impede progress by holding people back from new ideas and change.
John Stuart Mill suggests that the habits and customs entrenched in society act as barriers to human progress and advancement. These established practices can prevent individuals and societies from exploring new possibilities and achieving greater potential, indicating that challenging traditional customs is essential for growth and innovation.
In practice
In a speech about innovation, one could say, 'As John Stuart Mill pointed out, the perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom, and we must challenge the status quo.'
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.
She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.
If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of.
No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the people, and what God has given them he gives it for mankind.
Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.
Everything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.
The Christian "doctrines" are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection
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