Jose Ortega y Gasset Quotes

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

I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they have good consequences. So you try to do what will have the best consequences for all of those affected.

It's a survival thing. I don't do anything to be artistic or just because I like it.

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?

[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental.

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

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness.

I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the 'ought' from the 'is.' My point of view is that this is impossible; this is a farce.

The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

Truth is what works.

Because economics is all about optimising, doing the best you can with what you have - it's usually the first place you should look for answers if you want to maximise your happiness.

I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

Even at school I studied ethics instead of religion.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

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

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

If the ends don't justify the means, what does?

Utilitarianism is a philosophy from the olden days exploring the idea that whatever is best for the majority is the fairest.

There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.