I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal integrity and moral standards over societal judgment.
In this quote, John Stuart Mill asserts that goodness is a subjective label that should align with one's personal understanding and values rather than the impositions of others. He indicates that he would refuse to label a being as good if their definition contradicts his moral perspective, even if that results in dire consequences, such as condemnation to hell. Mill champions the importance of individual morals and the courage to stand by one's principles in the face of external pressure.
In practice
During a philosophical discussion about ethics, I might use this quote to illustrate the importance of personal moral standards.
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.
Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.
Our beliefs, our values shape the way we look out at the world and the way we treat it. If we believe that we were here, placed here by God, that this - all of this creation is for us, it's for us to go and occupy, dominate and exploit, then we will proceed to do that.
I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others. . . . Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.
Once you understand that Goliath is much weaker than you think he is, and David has superior technology, then you say: why do we tell the story the way we do? It becomes, actually, a far more meaningful and important story in its retelling than in the kind of unsophisticated way we've done it for, I think, too long.
Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
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