All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
– Jeremy Bentham
As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
– Jeremy Bentham
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
– Jeremy Bentham
He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn.
– Jeremy Bentham
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
– Jeremy Bentham
The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.
– Jeremy Bentham
The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but rather, Can they suffer?
– Jeremy Bentham
The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
– Jeremy Bentham
The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust to him armed with his primer against the soldier in full military array.
– Jeremy Bentham
Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
– Jeremy Bentham
The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
– Jeremy Bentham
The age we live in is a busy age in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.
– Jeremy Bentham
Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
– Jeremy Bentham
No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.