With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that women often have a deeper perception and understanding of their surroundings compared to men, given equal experience and capacity.
John Stuart Mill asserts that when men and women have equal opportunities and experiences, women tend to have a greater awareness and insight into their immediate environment. This assertion challenges traditional gender roles and emphasizes the capabilities of women in comparison to men, suggesting that perception is not solely dependent on gender but rather on the equality of experience and faculties.
In practice
In a gender equality workshop, to illustrate women's insights.
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.
As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
There should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences. It would be a great misunderstanding of this doctrine to suppose that it is one of selfish indifference, which pretends that human beings have no business with each other's conduct in life, and that they should not concern themselves about the well-doing or well-being of one another, unless their own interest is involved.
Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation.
Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.
Magic causes as much trouble as it cures.
For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the more it keeps silent.
Any conception of a god that is less than sovereign is an idol and no god at all.
Oh, how swiftly the glory of the world passes away!
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.