Bentham Quotes

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

Jeremy Bentham opened his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with the famous sentence Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. ~ Daniel Kahneman

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

Jeremy Bentham argued that 'even in the best of times the great mass of citizens will most probably possess few resources other than their daily labour and, consequently, be always near indigence'. As long as working man was near indigence, hunger would remain an effective tool to goad him to labour. Bentham argued that an important task of government was to ensure conditions of deprivation, thereby guaranteeing that hunger would [be a constant motivation to work]. ~ Linda McQuaig

Not Locke, nor Hume, nor Smith, nor Burke, could ever have argued, as Bentham did, that "every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty." Their argument was never a complete laissez faire argument, which, as the very words show, is also part of the French rationalist tradition and in its literal sense was never defended by any of the English classical economists. They knew better than most of their later critics that it was not some sort of magic but the evolution of "well-constructed institutions," where the "rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages" would be reconciled, that had successfully channeled individual efforts to socially beneficial aims. In fact, their argument was never antistate as such, or anarchistic, which is the logical outcome of the laissez faire doctrine; it was an argument that accounted both for the proper functions of the state and for the limits of state action. ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

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

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

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch ~ Bertrand Russell

The rarest of all human qualities is consistency. ~ Jeremy Bentham

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

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. 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. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light. ~ Jeremy Bentham

felicity. It's simple math, though. Add up the pleasurable aspects of your life, then subtract the unpleasant ones. The result is your overall happiness. The same calculations, Bentham believed, could apply to an entire nation. Every action a government took, every law it passed, should be viewed through the "greatest happiness" prism. ~ Eric Weiner

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

Jeremy Bentham startled the world many years ago by stating in effect that if the amount of pleasure obtained from each be equal there is nothing to choose between poetry and push-pin. Since few people now know what push-pin is, I may explain that it is a child's game in which one player tries to push his pin across that of another player, and if he succeeds and then is able by pressing down on the two pins with the ball of his thumb to lift them off the table he wins possession of his opponent's pin. [...] The indignant retort to Bentham's statement was that spiritual pleasures are obviously higher than physical pleasures. But who say so? Those who prefer spiritual pleasures. They are in a miserable minority, as they acknowledge when they declare that the gift of aesthetic appreciation is a very rare one. The vast majority of men are, as we know, both by necessity and choice preoccupied with material considerations. Their pleasures are material. They look askance at those who spent their lives in the pursuit of art. That is why they have attached a depreciatory sense to the word aesthete, which means merely one who has a special appreciation of beauty. How are we going to show that they are wrong? How are we going to show that there is something to choose between poetry and push-pin? I surmise that Bentham chose push-pin for its pleasant alliteration with poetry. Let us speak of lawn tennis. It is a popular game which many of us can play with pleasure. It needs skill and jud ~ W. Somerset Maugham

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

The philosophers of industrialism, from Bacon to Bentham, from Smith to Marx, insisted that the improvement of man's condition was the highest requirement of morality. But in what did the improvement consist? The answer seemed so obvious to them that they did not bother to justify it: the expansion and fulfillment of the material wants of man, and the spread of these benefits, from the few who had once preempted them, to the many who had so long lived on the scraps Dives had thrown into the gutter. ~ Lewis Mumford

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

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

As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country ... Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn't accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering. ~ Chris Bohjalian

The request of industry to government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Get out of my light. ~ Jeremy Bentham

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. ~ Jeremy Bentham

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

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

We can use manual mode thinking to explicitly describe our automatic settings (Aristotle); we can use manual mode thinking to justify our automatic settings (Kant); and we can use manual mode thinking to transcend the limitations of our automatic settings (Bentham and Mill). ~ Joshua D. Greene

To every man of great age - to Sir Wlater Bentham himself - the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.
The Man of Property, p. 363 ~ John Galsworthy

Reputation is the road to power ~ Jeremy Bentham

John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. He clearly set forth the premises of the scientific method. ~ John Stuart Mill

Every law is an infraction of liberty. ~ Jeremy Bentham

There's nothing unmanly about surrender. It takes a brave man to give in. ~ Dev Bentham

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

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

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong. ~ Jeremy Bentham

He'd sworn off sex, remember? Not unless he could do it properly, humanly, heartfully. ~ Dev Bentham

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

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

On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. ~ Will Durant

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

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

I decided that my means were sufficient to enable me to devote myself to botany, a determination which I never, during the long period of my subsequent career, had on any occasion any reason to repent of. ~ George Bentham

It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends. ~ Jeremy Bentham

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart. ~ Jeremy Bentham

happy life and merciful death ~ Jeremy Bentham

All poetry is misrepresentation. ~ Jeremy Bentham

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

What is the source of this premature anxiety to establish fundamental laws? It is the old conceit of being wiser than all posterity - wiser than those who will have had more experience, - the old desire of ruling over posterity - the old recipe for enabling the dead to chain down the living ~ Jeremy Bentham

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

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

I grimaced. "I've never done that before."

He smiled. "They all say that. But if it's true, we're even. I've never kissed a trick."

I rested my arms on the rickety table between us. He looked pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes. "I want to know why. You're brilliant, one of the best students I've ever had. Why are you…?"

"Sucking dick for dollars?" His mouth twisted into a cynical smile.

I sat back, aware that I didn't like the image of his mouth on other men. "Right. ~ Dev Bentham

If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it. ~ Jeremy Bentham

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

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

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

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

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