John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is one of the most important works of 19th-century Western political philosophy. Written less than a century after the American and French Revolutions—both of which sent shockwaves through Western civilization and inspired numerous political essays, pamphlets, and articles—On Liberty is a powerful argument in favor of individual liberty over governmental power. In particular, Mill explores the importance of “Civil, or Social Liberty” and “the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual.” Unfortunately, the threat of tyranny—either political or social—is ever-present, and debates over how much power a government should rightfully exercise over a state are as prevalent today as they were in Mill’s lifetime. In On Liberty, Mill describes what he believes is the ideal relationship between individual liberty and authority in a modern nation: the ideal government has limited power over the individuals that make up its society, and society itself tends to thrive under a government that allows it the greatest possible freedom.
Mill argues that there are three basic rights that all men and women have if they enjoy true liberty in their society. The first is that all people are perfectly free in “the inward domain of consciousness.” By this Mill means that people are able to form their own thoughts and share those thoughts with others; in other words, they enjoy the freedom of thought and of speech. The second is the “liberty of tastes and pursuits,” meaning that people are free to pursue happiness in their own lives in whatever way works best for them. The exception to this is if one individual’s actions will negatively affect another individual’s wellbeing and liberty. The final basic right necessary for true freedom is the ability “to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others.” In other words, people within a society must be free to congregate for innocent purposes, such as church, social clubs, and even protests. But just as the “liberty of tastes and pursuits” carried an exception—people’s actions can’t infringe on other people’s wellbeing and liberty—the key here is that such gathering must not be malicious in nature and must not negatively impact other people. If people are congregating with the intention of hurting or limiting the basic rights of any other individual or group, this does not count as a basic right that’s essential for true freedom.
Mill argues that the biggest threat to liberty in Western civilization’s past and present is authority. The danger authority poses to liberty is that it can quickly devolve into tyranny if whoever holds authority abuses their power. So, throughout history, when people called and fought for liberty, they “meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers.” However, Mill also argues that “All that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.” In other words, there must be some form of authority to both establish and maintain order so that the members of a society can enjoy liberty without being victimized by fellow citizens. For many, the solution to the problem of tyranny was to create a government of “elective and temporary rulers.” Under this practice, rulers are not granted authority based on their birth or wealth but through elections, which implies that anyone can become the political leader of a society. Furthermore, the position is not lifelong but short-term, thus reducing the likelihood of lawful authority becoming unlawful tyranny.
Although Mill stresses the importance of individual liberty throughout his essay, he also makes it clear that individual liberty must have its limits, and that a nation’s authority figures must enforce those limits. Though it may sound paradoxical, the right restrictions on individual liberty actually promotes and protects that liberty. Mill believes that “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way,” meaning individuals should be free to do whatever it takes to create a happy life for themselves. Because of this, a just government should never impose restrictions or obstacles that limit it citizens’ ability to do that. In other words, “the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.” By this Mill means that one is justified in doing whatever it takes to attain happiness unless it means doing some harm to another person or limiting another’s ability to pursue their personal happiness in his or her own way. Those in authority over a state are responsible for enforcing the rules and conditions that ensure the greatest amount of liberty to all its citizens, which means that citizens occasionally have to answer to society when they make decisions that infringe on the rights and liberties of others. Ultimately, however, Mill suggests that “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
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Liberty and Authority Quotes in On Liberty
What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation’s own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise.
The ‘people’ who exercise the power are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the ‘self-government’ spoken of is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, thought not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. […] But 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.
First: the opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.
In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, every one lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual or the family do not ask themselves—what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? […] They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature?
In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. They should be for ever stimulating each other to increased exercise of their higher faculties, and increased direction of their feelings and aims towards wise instead of foolish, elevating instead of degrading, objects and contemplations. But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it.
If there be among those whom it is attempted to coerce into prudence or temperance, any of the material of which vigorous and independent characters are made, they will infallibly rebel against the yoke. No such person will ever feel that others have a right to control him in his concerns, such as they have to prevent him from injuring them in theirs; and it easily comes to be considered a mark of spirit and courage to fly in the face of such usurped authority, and do with ostentation the exact opposite of what it enjoins[.]
A theory of ‘social rights’, the like of which probably never before found its way into distinct language: being nothing short of this—that it is the absolute social right of every individual, that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest particular, violates my social right, and entitles me to demand from the legislature the removal of the grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatever, except perhaps to that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for, the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes any one’s lips, it invades all the ‘social rights’ attribute to me by the Alliance. The doctrine ascribes to all mankind a vested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and even physical perfection, to be defined by each claimant according to his own standard.
Whoever succeeds in an overcrowded profession, or in a competitive examination; whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an object which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But it is, by common admission, better for the general interest of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of consequences. In other words, society admits no right, either legal or moral, in the disappointed competitors, to immunity from this kind of suffering; and feels called on to interfere, only when means of success have been employed which it is contrary to the general interest to permit—namely, fraud or treachery, and force.
A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs. The State, while it respects the liberty of each in what specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows him to possess over others. This obligation is almost entirely disregarded in the case of the family relations, a case, in its direct influence on human happiness, more important than all others taken together. The almost despotic power of husbands over wives needs not be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil, than that wives should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of law in the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power.
The objections which are urged with reason against State education, do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State’s taking upon itself to direct that education: which is a totally different thing. That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in State hands, I go as far as any one in deprecating. All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.
