Utilitarianism Quotes

All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of si...

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, h...

Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned....

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

In every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself.

To reduce poetry to its reflections of historical events and movements would be like reducing the po...

For a merely conscious being, death is the cessation of experiences, in much the same way that birth...

In the absence of any general inference from ‘A is a potential X’ to ‘A has the rights of an X’, we ...

It is interesting, in this context, to think again of our earlier argument that membership of the sp...

The capacity for suffering – or more strictly, for suffering and/or enjoyment or happiness – is not ...

We have examined a number of ethical issues. We have seen that many accepted practices are open to s...

The merely conscious being does not have a preference for continued life. Perhaps while having a ple...

My suggestion, then, is that we accord the fetus no higher moral status than we give to a nonhuman a...

I agree with Varner and Scruton that the more one thinks of one's life as a story that has chapters ...

A week-old baby is not a rational and self-aware being, and there are many nonhuman animals whose ra...

No doubt we instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a c...

For preference utilitarians, taking the life of a person will normally be worse than taking the life...

When we make ethical judgments, we must go beyond a personal or sectional point of view and take int...

Voluntary euthanasia occurs only when, to the best of medical knowledge, a person is suffering from ...

First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significan...

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should...

A gentleman is not a pot.

One of the main arguments that I make is that although almost everyone accepts that it is morally wr...

We have a special name, here, for a certain kind of failure to defer to the greater good—for putting...

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

What would yield the greater benefit to mankind: if I spent the afternoon taking stock in my dispens...

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

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

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is fo...