Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that any force diminishing individuality is a form of tyranny, regardless of its claimed justification.
John Stuart Mill argues that despotism manifests itself in various forms, and it fundamentally undermines individuality. Whether it is labeled as religious or societal authority, any attempt to suppress personal expression and autonomy is a violation of individual rights and freedoms. The essence of this quote lies in the importance of protecting individual thought and identity against oppressive forces.
In practice
In a speech about human rights, one might use this quote to underscore the importance of individuality.
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.
I've been present at birth, and death is just as present and in equal balance. And I've been present at death, and birth is just as present, again in equal balance.
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.
The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.
I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.
'Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein
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