Jeremy Bentham Quotes on Happiness
Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) gave classical utilitarianism its founding statement. The principle of utility — that an action is right insofar as it tends to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number — supplies the single criterion of moral and legal evaluation, and the felicific calculus enumerates the seven dimensions (intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, extent) along which the consequences of any proposed action are to be summed. The framework grounds Bentham's vast program of legal and political reform — penal law, judicial procedure, parliamentary representation, the panopticon prison — and remains the philosophical foundation against which Mill's qualitative refinements and the contemporary consequentialist tradition continue to define themselves.
Quotes
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”
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“Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria ) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth — that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”
Extracts from Bentham's Commonplace Book", in Collected Works , x, p. 142; He credits Priestley in his Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) or Beccaria with inspiring his use of the phrase, often paraphrased as " The greatest good for the greatest number ", but the statement "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" actually originates with Francis Hutcheson , in his Inquiry c -
“Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains . And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul .”
Advice to a young girl (22 June 1830) -
“To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?”
Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward , J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1