Jeremy Bentham

The more a man is a master of himself, the more he is a master of his own happiness.

The object of the penal code is to prevent crimes.

The best government is that which governs least.

Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.

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

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

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

The utility of all things is the measure of their virtue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,—and too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.

This is Bentham— a little philosopher. ... A philosopher! ... Can you screw your head off and on. ... No, sir. ... Oh, then, you are no philosopher.

Man, from the very constitution of his nature, prefers his own happiness to that of all other sensitive beings put together : but for this self preference, the species could not have had existence.

All inconsistencies, all surprises, have vanished: everything that has served to make the field of politics a labyrinth, has vanished. A clue to the interior of the labyrinth has been found : it is the principle of self-preference.

I was full of ambition; accustomed to hear myself puffed and praised; and my father was always dinning into my ears the necessity of pushing myself forward — so be hailed this visit as the making of my fortune.