💬 Quotes

"An action then may be said to be conformable to then principle of utility... when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it."

"Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry, if the game of push-pin furnishes more pleasure."

"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 then is, what? — the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it."

"A measure of government... may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it."

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

"Change is necessary for the life of the mind, but ancient habit is necessary for the life of the heart."

"The fundamental idea of anarchism is that all government is based on force, which is bad, and that it can be dispensed with."

"It is not enough that the State should be the owner of all the instruments of production; that only makes the State the universal capitalist, and the position of the worker may be even worse than it is now."

"The impulses which are creative are directed towards the realization of some definite object... the impulses which are possessive have for their end the enjoyment of some privilege or advantage."

"Institutions having a manifold character inevitably suffer from internal friction, and none more so than the State, which has to combine the functions of a judge, a policeman, a soldier, and a schoolmaster."

"Civilization has hitherto been based upon the servitude of the masses; with machinery and scientific production, we can at last contemplate a civilization based upon freedom."

"The soul is not a thing of sudden creation, but a growth of the ages. It has gathered experience through countless lives, and will continue to grow until it reaches perfection."

"Karma is not a system of arbitrary rewards and punishments administered by an external deity, but an immutable law of cause and effect operating in the moral and spiritual world."

"Every thought, desire, and deed sets in motion forces that must eventually return to their source. As we sow, so must we reap."

"Memory of past lives is generally veiled from our present consciousness for a wise purpose; otherwise, the accumulated burdens and griefs of the past would crush our developing minds."

"Man is his own maker. His present condition is the result of his past thoughts and actions, and his future state will be determined by his present endeavors."

"Death is merely an incident in the continuous life of the soul—a period of rest and assimilation between the acts of the great drama of earth-life."

"The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able, the grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social or political subjects... That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement."

"So long as the general opinion of the majority of mankind puts the word 'right' as the synonym of 'natural,' so long there will be nothing so unnatural as a great change, and no offense to common sense so great as that which makes an old established custom cease to seem natural."

"What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others."