Jeremy Bentham

Right... is the child of law.

— Jeremy Bentham

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

— Jeremy Bentham

Reputation is the road to power

— Jeremy Bentham

All poetry is misrepresentation.

— Jeremy Bentham

“Nonsense on stilts”

— Jeremy Bentham

“happy life and merciful death”

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

It is with government as with medicine, its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every…

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is…

— Jeremy Bentham

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them will fall on good ground,…

— Jeremy Bentham

In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that…

— Jeremy Bentham

Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in…

— Jeremy Bentham

Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who…

— Jeremy Bentham

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of…

— Jeremy Bentham

Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere…

— Jeremy Bentham

“. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well…

— Jeremy Bentham

The offence is what is improperly called the death of an infant, who has ceased to be, before knowing what existence is,…

— Jeremy Bentham

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

— Jeremy Bentham

An absolute and unlimited right over any object of property would be the right to commit nearly every crime.If Ihad sucha right…

— Jeremy Bentham

“By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action, according…

— Jeremy Bentham

“If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice,…

— Jeremy Bentham

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out…

— Jeremy Bentham

What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse?…

— Jeremy Bentham

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow…

— Jeremy Bentham

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.

— Jeremy Bentham

The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches.

— Jeremy Bentham