Best Bentham Quotes

#1. Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility.

Patrick O'Brian

#2. On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.

Will Durant

#3. Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.

Jeremy Bentham

#4. Bentham was an atheist and in no sense of the word could he be described as a theologian.

James E. Crimmins

#5. Jeremy Bentham opened his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with the famous sentence Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.

Daniel Kahneman

#6. It was the mystical dogma of Bentham and Adam Smith and the rest, that some of the worst of human passions would turn out to be all for the best. It was the mysterious doctrine that selfishness would do the work of unselfishness.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#7. Leaping forward, the Reverend OCTAVIUS wrung both the black worsted gloves of Mr. BENTHAM, and introduced the latter to the old lawyer and his ward.

Various