“Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.”

Source: On Representative Government (1861), Ch. XVI: Of Nationality, As Connected with Representative Government (p. 382)

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 "Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion…" by John Stuart Mill?
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill 179
British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873

Related quotes

Woodrow Wilson photo

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Statement on the successful filibuster by anti-war Senators against a bill to arm merchant ships (4 March 1917)
1910s

Edmund Burke photo

“All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777)

Karl Jaspers photo

“The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Man in the Modern Age (1933)
Context: The 'public' is a phantom, the phantom of an opinion supposed to exist in a vast number of persons who have no effective interrelation and though the opinion is not effectively present in the units. Such an opinion is spoken of as 'public opinion,' a fiction which is appealed to by individuals and by groups as supporting their special views. It is impalpable, illusory, transient; "'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gone"; a nullity which can nevertheless for a moment endow the multitude with power to uplift or destroy.

Abraham Lincoln photo

“If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, On Democratic Government (1864)
Context: If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections; and if the election could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we will have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.

Ryū Murakami photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo

“Representative government cannot express the will of the mass of the people, because there is no mass of the people”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Give Me Liberty (1936)
Context: Representative government cannot express the will of the mass of the people, because there is no mass of the people; The People is a fiction, like The State. You cannot get a Will of the Mass, even among a dozen persons who all want to go on a picnic. The only human mass with a common will is a mob, and that will is a temporary insanity. In actual fact, the population of a country is a multitude of diverse human beings with an infinite variety of purposes and desires and fluctuating wills.

Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo

“Free government is government by public opinion. Upon the soundness and integrity of public opinion depends the destiny of our democracy.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)

Alan M. Dershowitz photo
Joseph Stalin photo

“The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"What We Need", editorial published (24 October 1917), as quoted in Stalin : A Biography (2004) by Robert Service; also in Sochineniya, Vol. 3, p. 389
Variant translation:
The present imposter government, which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people, must be replaced by a government recognized by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants, and held accountable to their representatives
As quoted in The Bolsheviks Come to Power : The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (2004) by Alexander Rabinowitch, p. 252
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Edward Bernays photo

Related topics