Quotes from Jeremy Bentham

The quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry.

Nonsense on stilts

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

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

happy life and merciful death

What is the source of this premature anxiety to establish fundamental laws? It is the old conceit of being wiser than all posterity—wiser than those who will have had more experience,—the old desire of ruling over posterity—the old recipe for enabling the dead to chain down the living

if you hate much, punish much: if you hate little, punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all:

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.

For the same sentiment of antipathy, if implicitly deferred to, may be, and very frequently is, productive of the very worst effects. Antipathy, therefore, can never be a right ground of action.

aliment of philosophic pride: the hope of honour and reputation at the

If then, merely out of regard to population, it were right that paederasts should be burnt alive, monks ought to be roasted alive over a slow fire. (Offences Against One's Self

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

He will repeat it boldly (for it has been said before him), truths that form the basis of political and moral science are not to be discovered but by investigations as severe as mathematical ones, and beyond all comparison more intricate and extensive.

Those which can be experienced in the present life, can of course, be no others than such as human nature in the course of the present life is susceptible of: and from each of these sources may flow all the pleasures or pains of which, in the course of the present life, human nature is susceptible.

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

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

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