“my father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.”
Source: Autobiography (1873)
https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/39/mode/1up pp. 39–40
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John Stuart Mill 179
British philosopher and political economist 1806–1873Related quotes

Stranger in the Village http://harpers.org/archive/1953/10/stranger-in-the-village/ Harper's Magazine (October 1953); republished in Notes of a Native Son http://books.google.com/books?id=B0N2AAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+betrayal+of+a+belief+is+not+the+same+thing+as+ceasing+to+believe+If+this+were+not+so+there+would+be+no+moral+standards+in+the+world+at+all%22&pg=PA171#v=onepage (1955)

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: I believe in the supreme excellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteousness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that in the attempt to fulfil the law of righteousness, however imperfect it must remain, are to be found the inspiration, the consolation, and the sanctification of human existence.
We live in order to finish an, as yet, unfinished universe, unfinished so far as the human, that is, the highest part of it, is concerned. We live in order to develop the superior qualities of man which are, as yet, for the most part latent.

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 35
Context: It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally in some compound form. Thus oxygen and nitrogen, though in union they form the aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate in nature. Carbon is pure only in the diamond. And the metallic bases of the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well be supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with moisture makes them burn. Combination and re-combination are principles largely pervading nature. There are few rocks, for example, that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of elementary substances. What is still more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination, all the elementary substances observe certain mathematical proportions in their unions. It is hence supposed that matter is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of which belonging to any one substance, can only (through the operation of some as yet hidden law) associate with a certain number of the atoms of any other.

Salviati, First Day, Stillman Drake translation (1974)
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)