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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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