The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
The day may come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.
Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.
Bodies are real entities. Surfaces and lines are but fictitious entities. A surface without depth, a line without thickness, was never seen by any man; no; nor can any conception be seriously formed of its existence.
In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;βin that of poets of amusementβin that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,βand too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.
Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.
The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.
Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.
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.
As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
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.
Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
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.
Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.
