Jeremy Bentham famous quotes

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.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Animal #Rights #Hands

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...
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Dog #Horse #Animal

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Law #Lawyer #Uncertainty

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

#Able #Misery

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

#Stars #Flower #Men

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them will fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others, and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Growing Up #Kindness #Spring

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Ignorance #Law #Feet

Every law is an infraction of liberty.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Law #Liberty

Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Justice #Soul #Spurs

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

#Happiness #Numbers #Truth Is

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.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Pain #Add #Able

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 ...
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Law #Humanity #Protection

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

#Pain #Two #Government

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

#Community #Understanding #Individual

All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Punishment #Evil #Mischief

[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Practice #Track #Consistency

Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Moving #Men #Earth

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

#Simple #Rights #Nonsense

Priestly was the first (unless it was Becarria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth--that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Happiness #Numbers #Foundation

The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Atheism #Poison #Spirit

How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#House #Liberty #Purpose

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
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Pain #Party #Evil

Those physical difficulties which you cannot account for, be very slow to arraign; for he that would be wiser than Nature would be wiser than God.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Would Be #Difficulty #Wiser

In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,—and too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Ambition #Mind #Fiction

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

#Evil #Impossible #Censorship

The offence is what is improperly called the death of an infant, who has ceased to be, before knowing what existence is, a result of a nature not to give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination; and which can cause no regrets but to the very person who, through a sentiment of shame and pity, has refused to prolong a life begun under the auspices of misery.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Regret #Knowing #Giving

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.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Beautiful #Pain #Joy

He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Thinking #Matter #Thanks

Bodies are real entities. Surfaces and lines are but fictitious entities. A surface without depth, a line without thickness, was never seen by any man; no; nor can any conception be seriously formed of its existence.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Real #Men #Depth

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

#Government #Belief #Endeavor

Reputation is the road to power
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Reputation

If Christianity needed an Anti-Christ, they needed look no farther than Paul.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Historical #Looks #Christianity

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

#Perfection #Age #Busy

All poetry is misrepresentation.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Poetry #Misrepresentation #Poetry Is

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

#Happiness #Dry #Pretty Things

...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Consistency #Quality #Utilitarianism

What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Yoga #Suffering #Lines

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Tyrants #Anarchy #Tyranny

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Religion #Principles #Asceticism

The addability of the happiness of different subjects is a postulum without which all political reasonings are at a stand
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Political #Different #Economics

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

#Government #Political #Politics

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.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Pain #Thinking #Two

Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank, his dignity presents a motive for malversation, and his power furnishes the means.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Mean #Pace #Want

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Race #Judging #Employment

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Fate #Kingdoms #Turns

The word "independence" is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word "dependence" is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Ideas #Independence #Accessories

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

#Independent #Atheism #Pestilence

Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Support #Ignorant #Asylums

An absolute and unlimited right over any object of property would be the right to commit nearly every crime.If Ihad sucha right over thestick Iamaboutto cut, I might employ it as a mace to knock down the passengers, or I might convert it into a sceptre as an emblem of royalty, or into an idol to offend the national religion.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Cutting #Idols #Would Be

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

#Animal #Thinking #Suffering

Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Pain #Pleasure

O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science, victim of capricious destiny: doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of thy master, Legislation
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Destiny #Pedants #Temples

A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Animal #Suffering #Moral

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.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Fall #Yield #Mind

Right... is the child of law.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Children #Law

The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Law #Judging #Trials

Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Government #Order #Atmosphere

Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Government #Evil #Publicity

All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Government #Branches #Branches Of Government

Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Fall #Poetry #Goes On

Unkind language is sure to produce the fruits of unkindness--that is, suffering in the bosom of others.
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Suffering #Fruit #Language

To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?
-- Jeremy Bentham

#Character #Pleasure #Source