"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still"
About this Quote
Mill’s line lands like a moral trapdoor: even if you’re right, you’re still wrong. It’s the kind of liberalism with teeth, refusing the comforting fantasy that censorship is only dangerous when it targets truths. Mill is arguing from epistemic humility (our certainty is always suspect) but he’s really building a political ethic: power that can silence “error” will inevitably expand its definition of error, and the collateral damage isn’t accidental - it’s the point.
The first clause is a quiet indictment of human confidence. “Endeavouring to stifle” frames suppression as an active project, not an emergency measure. Mill isn’t worried about a single bad call by a well-meaning authority; he’s worried about the psychological intoxication of righteousness. Once a society allows itself to treat dissent as contamination, it stops testing its own ideas. Orthodoxy becomes muscle memory.
The sharper move is the second half: “even if we were sure.” That’s Mill preempting the favorite excuse of censors in every era: the belief that they’re protecting the public from obvious harm, obvious lies, obvious degeneracy. His claim is that the process of open contestation has intrinsic value. Silencing doesn’t just hide an opinion; it robs everyone else of the discipline of having to answer it. Truth, unchallenged, decays into slogan.
Context matters: On Liberty (1859) arrives in an England expanding mass politics and print culture, anxious about social conformity as much as state coercion. Mill is warning that the tyranny of “respectable” opinion can be as chilling as any law. The subtext is modern: free speech isn’t a reward for good ideas; it’s the cost of keeping our own from going stale.
The first clause is a quiet indictment of human confidence. “Endeavouring to stifle” frames suppression as an active project, not an emergency measure. Mill isn’t worried about a single bad call by a well-meaning authority; he’s worried about the psychological intoxication of righteousness. Once a society allows itself to treat dissent as contamination, it stops testing its own ideas. Orthodoxy becomes muscle memory.
The sharper move is the second half: “even if we were sure.” That’s Mill preempting the favorite excuse of censors in every era: the belief that they’re protecting the public from obvious harm, obvious lies, obvious degeneracy. His claim is that the process of open contestation has intrinsic value. Silencing doesn’t just hide an opinion; it robs everyone else of the discipline of having to answer it. Truth, unchallenged, decays into slogan.
Context matters: On Liberty (1859) arrives in an England expanding mass politics and print culture, anxious about social conformity as much as state coercion. Mill is warning that the tyranny of “respectable” opinion can be as chilling as any law. The subtext is modern: free speech isn’t a reward for good ideas; it’s the cost of keeping our own from going stale.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), Chapter 2, 'Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion' (contains the cited passage). |
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