Jeremy Bentham Quotes on Politics
Jeremy Bentham brought his utilitarian principle to bear on government and law, and the quotes gathered here present his political thought. Bentham held that the proper end of all policy is happiness, summed up in his counsel to create all the happiness you are able to create and remove all the misery you are able to remove. He took a clear-eyed view of law itself, holding, in a remark marked here as attributed, that every law is an evil because it restricts liberty, justified only when it prevents a greater evil. A lifelong reformer, he campaigned against custom, the blind tyrant, and against secrecy, which he called an instrument of conspiracy that ought never to be the system of a regular government. Drawn from his works on law and reform, these passages present politics as the rational pursuit of the greatest happiness, conducted in the open.
Quotes
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“Natural rights is simple nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”
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Attributed to Jeremy Bentham:
“Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.”
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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 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) -
“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.”
The Rationale of Reward (1811) -
“Ah! when will the yoke of Custom —Custom, the blind tyrant, of which all other tyrants make their slave—ah! when will that misery-perpetuating yoke be shaken off?—when, when will Reason be seated on her throne?”
Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of a Catechism, with Reasons for Each Article: With an Introduction, Showing the Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate, Reform (1817), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Part X (1 -
“Secrecy is an instrument of conspiracy; it ought not, therefore, to be the system of a regular government.”
On Publicity from The Works of Jeremy Bentham volume 2, part 2 (1839)