Jeremy Bentham Quotes on Knowledge

Quotes

• Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:

  “He who reads, judges. He who judges weighs. He who weighs may, and on a fit subject must, decide.”

• “Advice to a young girl (22 June 1830)”

  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 cr

• “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”

  To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?

• “Letter to Voltaire ( c . November 1776), quoted in Timothy L. S. Sprigge (ed.), The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (2017), p. 367”

  It is part of a work to which if ever it should be completed I intend to give some such title as Principles of Legal Policy; the object of it is to trace out a new model for the Laws: of my own country you may imagine, in the first place: but keeping those of other countries all along in view. To ascertain what the Laws ought to be, in form and tenor as well as in matter: and that elsewhere as wel

• “MSS 29, 32, University College Collection”

  It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.

• “The Rationale of Reward (1811)”

  Want keeps pace with dignity. Destitute of the lawful means of supporting his rank, his dignity presents a motive for malversation, and his power furnishes the means.