Inspired Thoughts: Liberty, Nature, and Existentialism

The night before the 2018 midterm elections, I began my daily readings with the second chapter of Johnathan Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” entitled Of the Liberty Of Thought and Discussion.

Knowing that I would be writing down all of my highlights and my thoughts on them in the morning, and, because I was trying not to overload my mind with too much substance, I limited my reading to only eight pages. Mill’s words are as meaningful today as they have ever been:

“…while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable…People more happily situated, who sometimes hear their opinions disputed, and are not wholly unused to be set right when they are wrong, place some unbounded reliance…