I don’t care whether animals are capable of thinking; all I care about is that they are capable of suffering!
Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.
It is with government as with medicine, its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.
All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.
To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?
The request of industry to government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Get out of my light.
Unkind language is sure to produce the fruits of unkindness – that is, suffering in the bosom of others.
Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.
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.
Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
Reputation is the road to power.
There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality.
We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them will fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others, and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring.
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
The word “independence” is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word “dependence” is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption.
The question is not can animals speak but can they suffer.
Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.
All poetry is misrepresentation.
Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.
Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.