# On Liberty Is a philosophical essay written by [[John Stuart Mill]] about the freedom of speech and expression in 1859. It is **one of the most important works of liberalism**. Mill made a few points that really resonated: - **You should discuss your beliefs with others. Your correct beliefs will be reaffirmed, and you'll also have the opportunity to get rid of the suboptimal ones you hold.** - **The only scenario in which an individual's liberty should be curtailed is society's self-protection.** [Full Text](https://eet.pixel-online.org/files/etranslation/original/Mill,%20On%20Liberty.pdf) ## Notable quotes ### Sharing opinions with others **It is the duty of governments, and of individuals, to form the truest opinions they can; to form them carefully, and never impose them upon others unless they are quite sure of being right.** But when they are sure (such reasoners may say), it is not conscientiousness but cowardice to shrink from acting on their opinions, and allow doctrines which they honestly think dangerous to the welfare of mankind, either in this life or in another, to be scattered abroad without restraint, because **other people, in less enlightened times, have persecuted opinions now believed to be true.** Why is it, then, that there is on the whole a preponderance among mankind of rational opinions and rational conduct? If there really is this preponderance—which there must be unless human affairs are, and have always been, in an almost desperate state—**it is owing to a quality of the human mind, the source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being, namely, that his errors are corrigible. He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience.** Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. **Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it.** ^cessbw **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.** ### On infringing liberty for self-protection The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That **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.** **Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.** ^ccoiv4