The Despotism of Custom
From Kant to Mill, Wollstonecraft and Bakunin: who smothers liberty — the state, custom or inequality — and what it costs to choose your own plan of life.
Day 1 of 7
“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding!”
— Immanuel Kant, Beantwortung der Frage Was ist Aufklärung
Day 2 of 7
“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Day 3 of 7
“The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Day 4 of 7
“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Day 5 of 7
“The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Day 6 of 7
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
— Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Day 7 of 7
“The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such.”
— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State