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

Jeremy Bentham

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Jeremy Bentham
Died: 1832
Died: June 6
Human Rights Activist
Jurist
Lawyer
Merchant
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Suffragist
Gamaliel Smith
Philip Beauchamp
Law
Evil
Business
Infraction
Government
Evils
Every
Medicine
Choice
Liberty
Choices

More quotes by Jeremy Bentham

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[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
Jeremy Bentham
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The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth.
Jeremy Bentham
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As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends.
Jeremy Bentham
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Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.
Jeremy Bentham
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The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
Jeremy Bentham
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The request of industry to government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Get out of my light.
Jeremy Bentham
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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.
Jeremy Bentham
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Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.
Jeremy Bentham
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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.
Jeremy Bentham
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Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
Jeremy Bentham
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An absolute and unlimited right over any object of property would be the right to commit nearly every crime.If Ihad sucha right over thestick Iamaboutto cut, I might employ it as a mace to knock down the passengers, or I might convert it into a sceptre as an emblem of royalty, or into an idol to offend the national religion.
Jeremy Bentham
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Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.
Jeremy Bentham
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There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.
Jeremy Bentham
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Without publicity, no good is permanent under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
Jeremy Bentham
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The word independence is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word dependence is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption.
Jeremy Bentham
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Pleasure is in itself a good nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.
Jeremy Bentham
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I don't care whether animals are capable of thinking all I care about is that they are capable of suffering!
Jeremy Bentham
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The question is not can animals speak but can they suffer.
Jeremy Bentham
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The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
Jeremy Bentham
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To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?
Jeremy Bentham