Utilitarianism

by John Stuart Mill

actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature.

some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others.

better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool

satisfied.

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.

indigence, disease, and the unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss of objects of affection.

A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted.

To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself,

Happiness is not an abstract idea, but a concrete whole;

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,

unjust to deprive any one of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongs to him by law.

just to respect, unjust to violate, the legal rights of any one.

rights which ought not to have belonged to him; in other words, the law which confers on him these rights, may be a bad law.

each person should obtain that (whether good or evil) which he deserves; and unjust that he should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he does not deserve.

deserve good if he does right, evil if he does wrong;

inconsistent with justice to be partial; to show favour or preference to one person over another,

Duty is a thing which may be exacted from a person, as one exacts a debt.