John Stuart Mill Was Awesome

I have now moved on from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Approximately one-sixth of the way through the book, I've already encountered the following three seriously awesome lines. The first, on the tendencies of people who find themselves in conflict with dominant social norms in some particular:

"They preferred endeavoring to alter the feelings of mankind on the particular points on which they were themselves heretical rather than make common cause in defense of freedom with heretics generally."

The second, rather self-explanatory:

"The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs or impede their efforts to obtain it."

The third, of a majority seeking to suppress a minority opinion with which it disagrees:

"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."

The first is an incredibly astute observation and might be one of the first explicit avowals of a pro-hersey agenda. It also, I think, is less true now than when he wrote it in 1859: over the past century and a half, the cause of letting heretics be heretics in all walks of life has made tremendous progress. I'm not sure that Mill and his mentor, Jeremy Bentham, were the first major pro-fun philosophers, but they were certainly in the vanguard of the "let's have fun!" agenda that has revolutionized human society. The second is basically the foundation of modern (secular) moral philosophy, and its acceptance is wholly necessary for the flourishing of that pro-fun agenda. The third is an essentially complete statement of one of the many, many sufficient reasons for protecting freedom of speech. This guy knew what he was talking about. He and Bentham both are just such so refreshingly right about stuff compared to most of their contemporaries and predecessors.