Jeremy Bentham

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.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

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;__n that of poets of amusement__n that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,__nd too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.

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

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

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

. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

The age we live in is a busy age in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.

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

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.

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

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.

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

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

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

If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.