John Stuart Mill

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

"A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life."

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained."

"Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience."

"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."

"The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes."

"The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it."

"The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind."

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant."