Utilitarian Quotes

• I do all the cooking in our family. I'm a utilitarian cook, rather than an adventurous one - I only have about 15 recipes in my repertoire that I rotate - but I love being able to go down to the river and catch a 30 lb. salmon, then grill it on the barbecue.

  Patrick Duffy

  Love Is, Rivers, Cooking

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• In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.

  Charles Dickens

  Age, Matter, Fairytale

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.15543, Delphi Classics

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• To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality

  John Stuart Mill

  Philosophical, Perfection, Would Be

  John Stuart Mill (1870). “Utilitarianism”, p.25

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• I have a utilitarian approach to dressing; as long as I quite like it and it covers me up, I don't care what it is.

  Jo Brand

  Long, Care, Approach

  "Question time". Interview with Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. April 8, 2009.

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• I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian.

  Dave Eggers

  Beautiful, Healing, Romance

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• A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses.

  Irving Babbitt

  Movement, Sides, Sentimental

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• 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.

  John Stuart Mill

  Pain, Action, Absence

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.99, Hackett Publishing

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• In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact.

  Jean Piaget

  Self, World, Contact

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• For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

  Ama Ata Aidoo

  Fighting, Artist, Purpose

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• Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

  Claude Debussy

  Beautiful, Hope, Art

  "The Life of the Creative Spirit". Book by H. Charles Romesburg, 2001.

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• I'm a Utilitarian, so I don't see the rule against lying as absolute; it's always subject to some overriding utility which may prevent its exercise.

  Peter Singer

  Workout, Lying, Exercise

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• All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Punishment, Evil, Mischief

  'Principles of Morals and Legislation' (1789) ch. 13, para. 2

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• I'm not one of these people who thinks everybody's gay.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Gay, Thinking, People

  Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. October 12, 2010.

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• Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure... they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Thinking, Government

  Jeremy Bentham (1838). “The works of Jeremy Bentham, now first collected: under the superintendence of his executor, John Bowring ...”, p.1

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• The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Ideas, Clothes, Arbitrary

  Wyndham Lewis (1969). “Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose”

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• Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Government, Two

  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ch. 1 (1789)

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• A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphereThe ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Running, Revenge, War

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• There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

  Eugenio Montale

  Writing, Connections, Poet

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• It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love, Men, Leisure

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• Centuries of secularism have failed to transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence...To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that 'something more' is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life.

  Alexander Schmemann

  People, Desire, May

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• To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they have good consequences. So you try to do what will have the best consequences for all of those affected.

  Peter Singer

  Mean, Judging, Trying

  "Chew the Right Thing". Chew the Right Thing, www.motherjones.com. May 3, 2006.

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• If I live to be old enough, I may sit down under some bush, the last left in the utilitarian world, and feel thankful that intellect in its march has spared one vestige of the ancient forest for me to die by.

  Thomas Cole

  Rivers, Environmental, World

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• A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Numbers, Realizing, Strive

  Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.81, A&C Black

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• The elimination of horrible disease, the increase of the quality of lives (for humans and for animals) achieved through research using animals is so incalculably great that the argument of these critics, systematically pursued, establishes not their conclusion but its reverse: to refrain from using animals in biomedical research is, on utilitarian grounds, morally wrong.

  Carl Cohen

  Animal, Quality, Research

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• Somebody who eats twice as much factory-farmed products as he or she needs to is clearly doing twice as much damage to the planet. From a utilitarian point of view, that's twice as bad.

  Peter Singer

  Views, Needs, Damage

  "Chew the Right Thing". Interview with Dave Gilson, www.motherjones.com. May 3, 2006.

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