English jurist & philosopher (1748-1832)
Independence is a relative term: according to the object you refer to, so is your doctrine about independence true or false. Independence, as against individuals, is favourable to probity. Why? Because it leaves a man more dependent than he would be otherwise on the opinion of the people. Independence, as against a despot, is favourable to probity. Why? Because it not only allows a man to obey those influences which strengthen the bands of his dependence on the people, but obliges him: for under a despot, the strength of the people is the only prop that independence, as it is called, can have to lean on.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Bentham's Draught for the Organization of Judicial Establishments
Reputation is the road to power.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
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.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Rationale of Reward
That which has no existence cannot be destroyed -- that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense -- nonsense upon stilts.
JEREMY BENTHAM
"A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights", Anarchical Fallacies
An evil comes rarely alone. A lot of evil cannot well fall upon an individual without spreading itself about him, as about a common centre. In the course of its progress we see it take different shapes: we see evil of one kind issue from evil of another kind; evil proceed from good and good from evil. All these changes, it is important to know and to distinguish; in this, in fact, consists the essence of legislation.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Principles of Legislation
Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Nature has placed mankind under the government 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; on the one hand the standard of right and wrong; on the other, the chain of causes and effects are fastened to their throne.
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Men, as they acquire experience, lose the faculties that might enable them to turn it to account: it is not so with times: the stock of wisdom acquired by ages is a stock transmitted through a vast number of generations, from men in the perfection of their faculties to others also in the perfection of their faculties.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still.
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.
JEREMY BENTHAM
A Fragment on Government
All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Book of Fallacies: from Unfinished Papers of Jeremy Bentham
Jurisprudential law is sham law: to ascribe stability to this creature of the imagination, is to ascribe stability to a shadow.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
If a sum of money has been stolen, from the moment it is restored to the owner the satisfaction for the future is complete. It only remains to indemnify him for the past, for the temporary loss which he experienced while the offence continued.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Theory of Legislation
Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Panopticon: or the Inspection House
Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service.
JEREMY BENTHAM
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
An absolute and unlimited right over any object of property would be the right to commit nearly every crime. If I had such a right over the stick I am about to cut, I might employ it as a mace to knock down the passengers, or I might convert it into a sceptre as an emblem of royalty, or into an idol to offend the national religion.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Virtue is the effort, the conquest of a difficulty, leaving, as its results, a balance of happiness. There may be, there is much good in the world, which no virtue has been concerned in producing. But there is no virtue where there is no balance of happiness.
JEREMY BENTHAM
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality
Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Let the legislator say or do what he will, the authority uon which the fate of the subject has its immediate dependence, must, in every case, be the will of the judge.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The Works of Jeremy Bentham
Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
JEREMY BENTHAM
The works of Jeremy Bentham