Jeremy Bentham quotes
English jurist and philosopher who founded modern utilitarianism. Treated pleasure and pain as the master coordinates of morality.
9 passages across 6 themes. More on Jeremy Bentham.
On action
“To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?”
“Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.”
“He found the philosophy of law a chaos, he left it a science: he found the practice of the law an Augean stable, he turned the river into it which is mining and sweeping away mound after mound of its rubbish.”
On presence
“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.”
“Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government.”
On ethics
“The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”
On truth
“Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth — that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”
On mind
“Ah! when will the yoke of Custom—Custom, the blind tyrant, of which all other tyrants make their slave—ah! when will that misery-perpetuating yoke be shaken off?—when, when will Reason be seated on her throne?”
On wisdom
“Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.”