Jeremy Bentham Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Right... is the child of law.

All poetry is misrepresentation.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

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

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

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.

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

Reputation is the road to power

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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