Jeremy BenthamThinkers

Anarchy is never far apart from tyranny.

The Community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were, its members. The interest of the community is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

Deep play is play in which the stakes are so high that it is irrational for men to engage in it at all.

Deep play is the irrational betting of all (or half of) one's wealth such that losing results in one's happiness being absolutely destroyed, but winning results only in a non-proportionally modest gain.

Democracy is a method to protect individual rights.

Human nature is fundamentally hedonistic. That is, it is governed first and foremost by pain avoidance and pleasure seeking, to which morals and rational action are bound as secondary.

Law is always an infraction of liberty.

The Lawyer's power is in the uncertainty of the law.

The Lawyer is the only person in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

Morality is best based on the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Pain is, along with pleasure, the two sovereign masters under which nature has placed mankind.

Pleasure is, along with pain, the two sovereign masters under which nature has placed mankind.