Category: Thought

Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty: And I repeat that government has but a choice of evils: In making this choice, what ought to be the object of the legislator? He ought to assure himself of two things; 1st, that in every case, the incidents which he tries to prevent are really evils; and 2ndly, that if evils, they are greater than those which he employs to prevent them. 

Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Legislation (1830), Ch. X: “Analysis of Political Good and Evil; How they are spread in society.”

Logic should no longer be considered an elegant and learned accomplishment; it should take its place as an indispensable study for every well-informed person.

William Stanley Jevons, Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870), Preface.

[I]n principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility.

Logic is not only an exact science, but is the most simple and elementary of all sciences; it ought therefore undoubtedly to find some place in every course of education.

William Stanley Jevons, Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870), Preface.

May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!

Joseph Warren, “Boston Massacre” oration, March 5, 1772.

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

Epicurus, as quoted in The Essential Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments (1993) edited by Eugene Michael O’Connor, p. 99.

We set the world afire!

Complaining about how much money someone is making is what dirty smear merchants do when, for all their efforts, they can’t think of anything actually wrong with what you’re saying and doing.

Mike Stephenson, aka Doctor Randomercam, in a talk at a men’s rights conference (2019).

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measure of a Man (1959).

Samuel Adams persevered through life in his Republican principles without any conformity to parties, influence or times. He was feared by his enemies, but too secret to be loved by his friends. He did not put confidence in them. . . He preserved the severity of Cato in his manners, and the dogmatism of a priest in his religious observances.

William Bentley, D. D.,Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts, as redacted by Diane Ackerman, “The Man Who Made a Revolution,” Parade, September 6, 1987. The complete diary entry can be found on Archive.org: The Diary of William Bentley, D.D.: Volume 3, January, 1803 – December, 1810 (Salem, Massachusetts: The Essex Institute, 1911), p. 49.