John Stuart Mill Quotes

The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.

I seek the utmost pleasure and the least pain.

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.

It is the greatest good to the greatest number which is the measure of right and wrong.

The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter.

Pleasure causes us to do base actions and pain causes us to abstain from doing noble actions.

All desirable things... are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as a means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain.

Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.

The true object of moral and political disquisition is pleasure or happiness.

Every perfect action is accompanied by pleasure. By that you can tell what you ought to do.

Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?

This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and to cling to pleasure.

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

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

Most human behavior is nothing other than the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure.

Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.

Most people affirm pleasure to be the good, but the finer sort of wits say it is knowledge.

It is no wonder if, under the pressure of these possibilities of suffering, men are accustomed to moderate their claims to happiness - just as the pleasure principle itself, indeed, under the influence of the external world, changed into the more modest reality principle -, if a man thinks himself happy merely to have escaped unhappiness or to have survived his suffering, and if in general the task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background.

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves. This ethical basis I call the ideal of the pigsty.