Jeremy Bentham Quotes

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove.

The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual

I don't care whether animals are capable of thinking; all I care about is that they are capable of suffering!

Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

By utility is meant that property is any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness(all this in the present case come to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness to the party who whose is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community; if a particular individual; then the happiness of that individual

Kind words cost no more than unkind ones . . . and we may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindliness around us at so little expense. If you would fall into any extreme let it be on the side of gentleness. The human mind is so constructed that it resists vigor and yields to softness.

Lawyers sometimes tell the truth. They'll do anything to win a case.

Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.

As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends.

...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.

There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.

Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.