Jeremy Bentham Quotes on Happiness

Quotes

• Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

  “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.”

• Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

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

• 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.”

• “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