Quotes About Utilitarianism

#1. As a philosophy, utilitarianism is the argument you can objectively determine what is the greatest good for the greatest number of people and we need the state to achieve that end.

Stefan Molyneux

#2. Utilitarianism: If we Britiash were Utilitarians we would have to believe that imprisoning the innocent and torturing suspects was justified if the Home Secretary thought it a good thing for our peace of mind.

William Donaldson

#3. The religion of orgasm: utilitarianism projected into sex life; efficiency versus indolence; coition reduced to an obstacle to be got past as quickly as possible in order to reach an ecstatic explosion, the only true goal of love-making and of the universe.

Milan Kundera

#4. If the Modern Technical Age is to remain human, it cannot overlook the trust that our ancestors have left with us. Our past cannot be mere matter for a more or less curious utilitarianism, like iron deposits, say, on the moon.

Marshall G.S. Hodgson

#5. Another pitfall: Utilitarianism is interested only in making the majority of people happy. It is concerned with the happiness of the many, not the misery of the few, which is fine if you are lucky enough to be among the happy many, but not so fine if you find yourself among the miserable few.

Eric Weiner

#6. Like Americans, people outside America want fun, want an emotional compensation for the utilitarianism and calculation that mark the rest of their lives.

Todd Gitlin

#7. The church is challenging such negative cultural elements as superstition, rugged individualism, materialism, hedonism, permissiveness and utilitarianism.

Francis Arinze

#8. The older I get, the more I like the idea of utilitarianism. I think that I'm not a trend-driven person. I really believe in keeping your canvas very basic and sort of adding the accouterments from there. I look at creating intrigue with outfits through accessories.

Erin Wasson

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

Jeremy Bentham

#10. If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines.

Wilhelm Von Humboldt

#11. You know it has to do with Kelley and drugs, and me ... and there's like, what is it? I didn't read it. That's my thing. That's what I do, I don't read things if I don't think they're going to be good. I don't even look at the pictures.

Kim Deal

#12. The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

Leon Trotsky

#13. Good is to bee sought out, and evill attended.

George Herbert

#14. It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.

John Hersey

#15. In the absence of any general inference from 'A is a potential X' to 'A has the rights of an X', we should not accept that a potential person should have the rights of a person, unless we can be given some specific reason why this should hold in this particular case.

Peter Singer

#16. Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of medical knowledge, a person is suffering from an incurable and painful or extremely distressing condition. In these circumstances one cannot say that to choose to die quickly is obviously irrational.

Peter Singer

#17. A bad peace is worse than war.

Tacitus

#18. I do not care about the greatest good for the greatest number ... Most people are poop-heads I do not care about them at all.

James Alan Gardner

#19. Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.

Jeremy Bentham

#20. Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else: we can bore people long after we are dead.

Sinclair Lewis

#21. Everything looks beautiful. The Book of Shhh says that deliria alters your perception, disables your ability to reason clearly, impairs you from making sound judgments. But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

Lauren Oliver

#22. Tsze-kung asked, "What do you think of me?" The Master said, "You are a pot." "What sort of pot?" "A precious ritual vase.

Confucius

#23. We have examined a number of ethical issues. We have seen that many accepted practices are open to serious objections. What ought we to do about it? This, too, is an ethical issue.

Peter Singer

#24. The rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

Jeremy Bentham

#25. The truth about intimate relationships is that they can never be any better than our relationship with ourselves.

James Hollis

#26. Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

Immanuel Kant

#27. Your business and results are a reflection of you. Your business and results will grow in direct proportion to your own growth.

James Arthur Ray

#28. To reduce poetry to its reflections of historical events and movements would be like reducing the poet's words to their logical or grammatical connotations.

Octavio Paz

#29. You know that you can't go out there and change the world tomorrow morning. It just takes time, and the realization of that does not produce frustration. What produces frustration, is when you expect the world to join with your cause it's so reasonable. It is not reasonable to unreasonable people.

Jacque Fresco

#30. A gentleman is not a pot.

Confucius

#31. And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?

John Donne

#32. Ava wasn't the poor unsuspecting woman who'd let the wild thing into the house, she was the wild thing's mate, creeping indoors at his side ...

Lauren Gilley

#33. In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.
(Frauds on the Fairies, 1853)

Charles Dickens

#34. We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater good - for putting a personal sense of doing right above any objective measure of the outcome. It's called 'moral vanity'.

Greg Egan

#35. In every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself.

Neil Postman