Quotes from Utilitarianism

“It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have. been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“To those who have neither public nor private affections, the excitements of life are much curtailed, and in any case dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish interests must be terminated by death: while those who leave after them objects of personal affection, and especially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigour of youth and health.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“: إن البشر يفقدون تطلعاتهم العالية لأنهم يفقدون أذواقهم الفكرية وذلك بسبب ضيق الوقت أو عدم توفر الفرص السانحة لهم بالتدليل عليها. فيدمنون على اللذات الحسية ليس بسبب أنهم يفضلونها بعد المداولة، بل لأنها هي الوحيدة التي لديهم إمكانية الوصول إليها أو الوحيدة التي يمكن الاستمتاع بها”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“إن القدرة على أسمى المشاعر هي في معظم الطبائع، نبتة رقيقة جداً، وسهلة الفناء، ليس فحسب من خلال التأثيرات السيئة والمعادية لها، بل بسبب نقص بسيط في تغذيتها. وبالنسبة لأغلبية الشبان فإنها تموت إذا ما كانت انشغالاتهم بحكم وضعهم في الحياة التي سخروا لها، والمجتمع الذي وجدوا أنفسهم فيه، لا تساعدهم على الحفاظ على هذه القدرات العالية في حالة اشتغال. إن البشر يفقدون تطلعاتهم العالية لأنهم يفقدون أذواقهم الفكرية وذلك بسبب ضيق الوقت أو عدم توفر الفرص السانحة لهم بالتدليل عليها. فيدمنون على اللذات الحسية ليس بسبب أنهم يفضلونها بعد المداولة، بل لأنها هي الوحيدة التي لديهم إمكانية الوصول إليها أو الوحيدة التي يمكن الاستمتاع بها”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“It results from the preceding considerations, that there is in reality nothing desired except happiness. Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until it has become so. Those who desire virtue for its own sake, desire it either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the consciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both reasons united; as in truth the pleasure and pain seldom exist separately, but almost always together, the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of virtue attained, and pain in not having attained more. If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other no pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would desire it only for the other benefits which it might produce to himself or to persons whom he cared for.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“It is a strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveler respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the use of land-marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong, as well as on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it by: the impossibility of doing without them, being common to all systems, can afford no argument against any one in particular: but gravely to argue as if no such secondary principles could be had, and as if mankind had remained till now, and always must remain, without drawing any general conclusions from the experience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“Yet the love of money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off. It may, then, be said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. If we have intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as well as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is no necessity that the former should be more infallible in their sphere than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that wrong judgments are occasionally suggested by those, as wrong actions by these. But though it is one thing to believe that we have natural feelings of justice, and another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion of conduct, these two opinions are very closely connected in point of fact. Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

“Next to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory, is want of mental cultivation.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism

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Popular quotes

“I’M SO GLAD you’re not dumb, Yaz,” Neela said. Yazeed shot her a sidelong glace. “I thought you were going to say dead.” “That, too.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from Rogue Wave

“De rede is van ons bewustzijn maar de buitenkant. Daaronder zit het gevoel. Vanbinnen, waar niemand ons kan zien, durven wij er feilloos op te vertrouwen. Daar weten wij alles zonder woorden. Als wij nooit naar buiten hoefden te treden zouden we geen moment aan onze intuïtie twijfelen. Maar we gaan uit en willen de anderen ook ons innerlijk keurig presenteren. Dus kammen we onze gedachten uit en trekken ze recht. Herinner jij je dan niet dat je als kind instinctief aanvoelde hoe mensen in elkaar zaten, bij wie je het goede kon vinden en wie voor jou gevaarlijk was, wat je moest doen om gevoed te worden, te overleven en liefde te vinden? Ik geloof dat veel van de kennis waarnaar wij op zoek zijn, een antwoord op alle belangrijke vragen, al vanaf onze geboorte in ons aanwezig is en dat wij alleen maar zijn vergeten hoe we die moeten aanboren. Sterker, van het meeste zijn we vergeten dat het bestaat (…). Al die intuïtieve kennis, die op zijn sterkst is bij onze geboorte, wanneer wij haar het hardst nodig hebben omdat ons nog geen andere middelen ter beschikking staan om te overleven, en die minder wordt naarmate wij leren te denken in plaats van te voelen, dat instinctieve weten is niet vergaan. Het ligt alleen bedolven onder de lawine aan argumenten en redeneringen die wij tegenwoordig nodig hebben om onze wereld voor onszelf begrijpelijk te maken. Af en toe, een enkele keer in een droom, in een moment van verstrooiing vinden we er misschien ineens iets van terug. Inspiratie zal een kunstenaar het noemen, voor iemand die gelooft is het een openbaring. Maar voor ons, die rationeel proberen te denken? Misschien zouden wij het een inval noemen, een moment van verlichting waarin je ineens de oplossing ziet van een vraagstuk dat je nog niet eens had geformuleerd.”
― Arthur Japin, quote from In Lucia's Eyes

“Hold up, buddy. A contract? Is this conversation about to get Fifty Shades of Grey?”
― L.A. Casey, quote from Alec

“When you see a picture of the ocean, it's cut off at the edges. You know it goes on and on to the right and on and on to the left, but you never really know how it feels to see that until you actually do see it.”
― Diane Chamberlain, quote from Necessary Lies

“I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.”
― Sappho, quote from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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