Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by 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.

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

The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

All poetry is misrepresentation.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches.

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

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

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

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

The question is not can animals speak but can they suffer.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Reputation is the road to power

It is with government as with medicine, its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.

Right... is the child of law.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.