Principle of Utility Quotes

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

I seek the utmost pleasure and the least pain.

We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing.

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

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.

The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility

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

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

I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.