Jeremy Bentham Quotes
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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, if a particular individual, the happiness of that individual.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
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Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
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The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
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Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
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As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
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To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?
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It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.
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Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
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All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
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No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.
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The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?'
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In principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
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The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.
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The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
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Every law is an infraction of liberty.
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Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
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It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual.
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Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
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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.