5 quotes
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
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.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure—
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)