Jeremy Bentham

in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it be adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference.

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.

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

[P]leasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of …

The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure— Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure. Such pleasures seek if private be thy end: If it be public, wide let them extend. Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view: If pains must come, let …

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.

The principle of utility judges any action to be right by the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interests are in question... if that party be the community the happiness of the community, …

That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense …

Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government.

[O]f corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter—the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.

we see evil of one kind issue from evil of another kind; evil proceed from good and good from evil. All these changes, it is important to know and to distinguish; in this, in fact, consists the essence of legislation.

He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them.

Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils

[I am] at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman.

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?

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure

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.

It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to …

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

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