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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.

— Jeremy Bentham An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)

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More quotes by Jeremy Bentham

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove.

Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth — that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?

Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811)

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)

It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.

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All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jeremy Bentham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.