Utilitarianism Quotes

• Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.

  John Stuart Mill

  Pain, Action, Absence

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.99, Hackett Publishing

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  The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

  John Stuart Mill

  War, Power, Libertarian Party

  On Liberty ch. 1 (1859)

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

  Leon Trotsky

  Freedom, Philosophy, Mean

  "When It Comes to Personal Transformation, Could the Ends Be the Means?" by Russell Bishop, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 9, 2011.

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• Utilitarianism condones killing of innocent human beings, even murder, if it makes the world a better place.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  World, Murder, Killing

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, everyone who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will not fail to find the enviable existence

  John Stuart Mill

  Law, Intellectual, Liberty

  John Stuart Mill (2017). “Utilitarianism”, p.13, Coventry House Publishing

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• Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Government, Two

  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ch. 1 (1789)

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• It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

  John Stuart Mill

  Pigs, Different, Fool

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.102, Hackett Publishing

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• Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of "things" and not of "persons," a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members.

  Pope John Paul II

  Faith, Children, Inspiration

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• The problem I see with utilitarianism, or any form of consequentialism, is not that it gets the wrong answers to moral questions. I think just about any moral theory, worked out intelligently, and applied with good judgment, would get just about the same results as any other.

  Allen W. Wood

  Thinking, Wrong Answers, Moral

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• ...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Consistency, Quality, Humans

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.11, Hackett Publishing

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• All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Simple, People

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “On Liberty and Utilitarianism”, p.234, Bantam Classics

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• The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Philosophy, Struggle, People

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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

  Jeremy Bentham

  Happiness, Dry, Pretty Things

  Jeremy Bentham (1838). “The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Now First Collected: Under the Superintendence of His Executor, John Bowring ...”, p.64

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• Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man?

  Charles Darwin

  Powerful, Men, Animal

  Charles Darwin (1872). “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”, p.68

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• Once we realise that utilitarianism comes with the idea of blameworthy rightdoing (such as when you push a big man onto the tracks in order to save five lives) and blameless wrongdoing (such as when you don't push a big man onto the tracks in order to save five lives), then utilitarianism all of a sudden appears to give the right answers.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Men, Order, Ideas

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Thinking, Government

  Jeremy Bentham (1838). “The works of Jeremy Bentham, now first collected: under the superintendence of his executor, John Bowring ...”, p.1

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• These theories, deontology, the moral rights theory, and utilitarianism, contradict one another. Moreover, they give conflicting (inconsistent) recommendations. It is hence not possible to hold them together, in a pursuit of moral truth.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Rights, Giving, Together

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

  Andrei Sakharov

  Stress, War, Men

  "Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" by Andrei Sakharov, ("The Threat to Intellectual Freedom"), www.sakharov-center.ru. 1968.

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• I am indeed a hedonistic utilitarian. I have defended hedonistic utilitarianism for quite a while.

  Torbjorn Tannsjo

  Utilitarian, Hedonistic

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Ideas, like men, can become dictators. We Americans have so far escaped regimentation by our rulers, but have we escaped regimentation by our own ideas? I doubt if there exists today a more complete regimentation of the human mind than that accomplished by our self-imposed doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism.

  Aldo Leopold

  Men, Ideas, Self

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.574, Library of America

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• Utilitarianism had found [in Samuel Smiles' Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy.

  John Carroll

  Hero, Winning, Boys

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• The moves to contractualism and utilitarianism required some extra ingredients besides mortalism, the denial that God is in charge of the world, and the doctrine that physical and psychological pain are the greatest evils.

  Catherine Wilson

  Pain, Moving, Evil

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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

  Francis Arinze

  Challenges, Church, Negative

  "Arinze Sees Fundamentalism Posing Bar to Interfaith Relations". www.beliefnet.com. December 2001.

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• Nietzsche is absolutely correct, even more correct today than when he wrote it in Thus Spake Zarathustra: I looked all about me for human beings but all I saw were fragments, deformed creatures with too much eye or too much ear. This is what the modern culture of specialized intellect-the kind of one-sidedness that banausic utilitarianism alone can value-works so hard to produce.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Eye, Too Much

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• 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

  Fun, Emotional, America

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