Jeremy Bentham Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes
Browse quotations by Jeremy Bentham with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Source identified1
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“it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”
Meaning & context
Bentham states the utilitarian standard he uses to judge laws and institutions: their moral evaluation should turn on the happiness produced for the people affected.
Source details
A Fragment on Government, Preface (1776). Bentham introduces the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number' formulation as a fundamental axiom while arguing for criticism and reform of established law. This remains eighteenth-century utilitarian legal/political philosophy rather than a settled universal ethical or policy metric.
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“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
Meaning & context
Bentham shifts the basis for moral consideration of animals away from intelligence or speech and toward the capacity to experience suffering.
Source details
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Chapter XVII, section 1 footnote, reviewed against the represented Liberty Fund text. Bentham's 'Can they suffer?' question appears in his argument that sentience, not species membership or speech, is morally relevant to cruelty; it remains historical utilitarian philosophy rather than current legal doctrine.
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“The object of the inspection principle is directly the reverse: it is to make them not only suspect, but be assured, that whatever they do is known, even though that should not be the case.”
Meaning & context
Bentham distinguishes inspection from secret eavesdropping: the proposed system is meant to shape behavior by making people believe their actions may always be observed.
Source details
Panopticon; or, The Inspection-House, represented by the Wikisource public-domain transcription of the 1791 publication containing letters written in 1787. This is Bentham’s historical institutional and penal-design argument, not a modern endorsement of surveillance or prison policy.