“It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.”

—  John Stuart Mill

J. S. Mill, Dissertations and discussions: political, philosophical, and historical, Volume 2 http://books.google.gr/books?id=FyfPAAAAMAAJ&dq=, H. Holt, 1864, p. 11.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social phi…" by John Stuart Mill?
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill 179
British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873

Related quotes

Gianfranco Fini photo

“Resistants were on the right side, Salò Republic's combatants on the wrong one. (…) One cannot equate who was fighting for a right cause of equality and freedom, and who, apart of goodfaith, was on the wrong side. (…) The judgement of the Right [on Fascism] have to be negative, due to freedom limitation. (…) We cannot deny ourselves history, and Fascism was a dictatorship that denied some fundamental freedoms.”

Gianfranco Fini (1952) Italian politician

cited in «La destra si riconosca nell'antifascismo» http://www.corriere.it/politica/08_settembre_13/fini_antifascismo_ccb8bcec-8175-11dd-95db-00144f02aabc.shtml, Il Corriere della Sera, 13 September 2008).

Ayn Rand photo

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher
T.S. Eliot photo

“time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

Thucydides photo

“There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.123-[1]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/, Op-Ed, February 9, 2007

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Context: Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“You are told that education, that enlightenment, that leisure, that high station, that political experience are arrayed in the opposing camp, and I am sorry to say that to a large extent I cannot deny it. But though I cannot deny it, I painfully reflect that in almost every one, if not in every one, of the great political controversies of the last 50 years, whether they affected the franchise, whether they affected commerce, whether they affected religion, whether they affected the bad and abominable institution of slavery, or whatever subject they touched, these leisured classes, these educated classes, these wealthy classes, these titled classes, have been in the wrong.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Edinburgh (30 June 1892), quoted in The Times (1 July 1892), p. 12.
1890s

Arnold Toynbee photo

“Party historians go to the past for party purposes; they seek to read into the past the controversies of the present.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 32

Clarence Darrow photo

“The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Address to the court in "The Communist Trial", People v. Lloyd (1920)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“In history, we are concerned with what has been and what is; in philosophy, however, we are concerned not with what belongs exclusively to the past or to the future, but with that which is, both now and eternally — in short, with reason.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

As translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975)
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

Related topics