Excerpts

"What was once desired as a help towards getting happiness has come to be desired for its own sake—as a part of happiness."

Mill

"It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and any other talents of the mind we may care to name, or courage, resolution and constancy of purpose, as qualities of temperament, are without doubt good and desirable in many respects; but they can also be extremely bad and hurtful when the will is not good which has to make use of these gifts of nature...it is exactly the same with...power, wealth, honour, even health"

Kant

"It is then seen at once that a system of nature by whose law the very same feeling whose function is to stimulate the furtherance of life should actually destroy life would contradict itself and consequently could not subsist as a system of nature."

Kant

"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end"

Kant

"All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically...if the action would be good solely as a means to something else, the imperative is hypothetical; if the action is represented as good in itself and therefore as necessary, in virtue of its principle, for a will which of itself accords with reason, then the imperative is categorical."

Kant

"Although it is possible that a universal law of nature could subsist in harmony with this maxim, yet it is impossible to will that such a principle should hold everywhere as a law of nature."

Kant

"Even if, by some special disfavor of destiny...this will is entirely lacking in power to carry out its intentions; if by its utmost effort it still accomplishes nothing, and only good will is left...even then it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself. Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add to, nor subtract from, this value."

Kant

"I will here pass over all actions already recognized as contrary to duty...for about these the question does not even arise whether they could have been done for the sake of duty..."

Kant

"To preserve one's life is a duty, and besides this every one has also an immediate inclination to do so. But on account of this the often anxious precautions taken by the greater part of mankind for this purpose have no inner worth, and the maxim of their action is without moral content. They do protect their lies in conformity with duty but not from the motive of duty. When, on the contrary, disappointments and hopeless misery have quite taken away the taste for life; when a wretched man, strong in soul and more angered at his fate than faint-hearted or cast down, longs for death and still preserves his life without loving it—not from inclination or fear but from duty; then indeed his maxim has a moral content".

Kant

"We need not now wonder, when we look back upon all the previous efforts that have been made to discover the principle of morality, why they have one and all been bound to fail. Their authors saw man as tied to laws by his duty, but it never occurred to them that he is subject only to laws which are made by himself and yet are universal, and that he is bound only to act in accordance with a will which is his own but has for its natural purpose the function of making universal law"

Kant

"[the categorical imperative] is concerned, not with the matter of the action and its presumed results, but with its form and with the principle from which it follows; and what is essentially good in the action consists in the mental disposition, let the consequences be what they may. This imperative may be called the imperative of morality"

Kant

"act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law of nature"

Kant

"as a rational being he necessarily wills that all his powers should be developed, since they serve him, and are given him, for all sorts of possible ends."

Kant

"some actions are so constituted that their maxim cannot even be conceived as a universal law of nature without contradiction, let alone be willed as what ought to become one. In the case of others we do not find this inner impossibility, but it is still impossible to will that their maxim should be raised to the universality of a law of nature, because such a will would contradict itself."

Kant

"the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept that although every man wants to attain happiness, he can never say definitely and in unison with himself what it really is that he wants and wills...he has no principle by which he is able to decide with complete certainty what will make him truly happy."

Kant

"the inclination for honor, which if fortunate enough to hit on something beneficial and right and consequently honourable, deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem; for its maxim lacks moral content, namely the performance of such actions, not from inclination, but from duty. Suppose then that the mind of this friend of man was overclouded by sorrows of his own which extinguished all sympathy with the fate of others, but that he still had power to help those in distress, though no longer stirred by the need of others because sufficiently occupied with his own; and suppose that, when no longer moved by any inclination, he tears himself out of this deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination [but] for the sake of duty alone; then for the first time his action has its genuine moral worth"

Kant

"the universality of a law that every one believing himself to be in need may make any promise he pleases with the intention not to keep it would make promising, and the very purpose of promising, itself impossible, since no one would believe he was being promised anything, but would laugh at utterances of this kind as empty shams."

Kant

"the will is therefore not merely subject to the law, but is so subject that it must be considered as also making the law for itself and precisely on this account as first of all subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author)."

Kant

"to assure one's own happiness is a duty (at least indirectly); for discontent with one's state, in a press of cares and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to the transgression of duty."

Kant

"According to the utilitarian doctrine, virtue is not naturally and originally part of the end (happiness) but it is capable of becoming so" and "it was originally a means to something that is desired and if it weren't a means to anything else it would be of no interest to anyone; but by association with what it is a means to it comes to be desired for itself, and indeed desired with the utmost intensity."

Mill

"As the practical way to get as close as possible to this ideal, the ethics of utility would command two things. First, laws and social arrangements should place the happiness (or what for practical purposes we may call the interest) of every individual as much as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole. Education and opinion, which have such a vast power over human character, should use that power to establish in the mind of every individual an unbreakable link between his own happiness and the good of the whole..."

Mill

"Before acting, one doesn't have time to calculate and weigh the effects on the general happiness of any line of conduct."

Mill

"But is utility the only morality that can provide us with excuses for evil doing and means of cheating our own conscience? Of course not!...it is the fault not of any creed but of the complicated nature of human affairs that rules of conduct can't be formulated so that they require no exceptions, and hardly any kind of action can safely be stated to be either always obligatory or always condemnable. Every ethical creed softens the rigidity of its laws by giving the morally responsible agent some freedom to adapt his behavior to special features of his circumstance; and under every creed, at the opening thus made, self-deception and dishonest reasoning get in."

Mill

"Do human beings desire nothing for itself except that which is a pleasure to them or that whose absence is a pain? We are now confronted by a question of fact and experience, which like all such questions depends on evidence. It can only be answered by practised self-awareness and self-observation, assisted by observation of others...it is a physical and metaphysical impossibility to desire anything except in proportion as the idea of it is pleasant."

Mill

"Few human creatures would agree to be changed into any of the lower animals in return for a promise of the fullest allowance of animal pleasures...if they ever think they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme that to escape from it they would exchange their situation for almost any other, however undesirable they may think the other to be. Someone with higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is probably capable of more acute suffering, and is certainly vulnerable to suffering at more points...but in spite of these drawbacks he can't ever really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence."

Mill

"From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects and schools, carrying on vigorous warfare against one another."

Mill

"Happiness is not an abstract idea but a concrete whole; and these [power, fame, health] are some of its parts."

Mill

"If 'happiness' is taken to mean a continuous state of highly pleasurable excitement, it is obvious that this is impossible...the 'happiness' that they meant was not a life of rapture; but a life containing some moments of rapture, a few brief pains, and many and various pleasures; a life that is much more active than passive; a life based on not expecting more from life than it is capable of providing."

Mill

"If those who are competently acquainted with both these pleasures place P1 so far above P2 that they prefer it even when they know that a greater amount of discontent will come with it, and wouldn't give it up in exchange for any quantity of P2 that they are capable of having, we are justified in ascribing to P1 a superiority in quality that so greatly outweighs quantity as to make quantity comparatively negligible."

Mill

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."

Mill

"It is often affirmed that utilitarianism renders men cold and unsympathising; that it chills their moral feelings towards individuals; that it makes them regard only the dry and hard consequences of actions, not taking into their moral estimate the qualities from which those actions emanate....No known ethical standard declares that an action is good or bad because it is done by a lovable, brave or benevolent man, or by an unfriendly, cowardly or unsympathetic one. These considerations of personal virtue are relevant to how we estimate persons not actions: and the utilitarian theory in no way conflicts with the fact that there are other things that interest us in persons besides the rightness and wrongness of their actions."

Mill

"It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. In estimating the value of anything else, we take into account quality as well as quantity: it would be absurd if the value of pleasures were supposed to depend on quantity alone."

Mill

"Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they don't have time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to lower pleasures not because they deliberately prefer them but because they are either the only pleasures they can get or the only pleasures they can still enjoy. It may be questions whether anyone who has remained equally capable of both kinds of pleasure has ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower kind..."

Mill

"Now, such a theory of life arouses utter dislike in many minds, including some that are among the most admirable in feeling and purpose. The view that life has (as they express it) no higher end—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—than pleasure they describe as utterly mean and groveling, a doctrine worthy only of pigs."

Mill

"Questions about ultimate ends can't be settled by direct proof. You can prove something to be good only by showing it is a means to something that is admitted without proof to be good...considerations can be presented that are capable of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof."

Mill

"The accusation implies that human beings are capable only of pleasures that pigs are also capable of...Human beings have higher faculties than the animal appetites, and once they become conscious of them they don't regard anything as happiness that doesn't include their gratification."

Mill

"The doctrine that the basis of morals is utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong in proportion as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By 'happiness' is meant pleasure and the absence of pain; by 'unhappiness' is meant pain and the lack of pleasure."

Mill

"The happiness that forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not the agent's own happiness but that of all concerned."

Mill

"The most appropriate label is a sense of dignity. All human beings have this sense in one form or another, and how strongly a person has it is roughly proportional to how well endowed he is with the higher faculties."

Mill

"The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and similarly with the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it."

Mill

"There has been plenty of time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time, mankind have been learning by experience what sorts of consequences actions are apt to have, this being something on which all the morality of life depends, as well as all the prudence."

Mill

"Though originally an offshoot from desire, will can in time take root and detach itself from the parent stock; so much so that in the case of a habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we desire it, we often desire it only because we will it...we can will from habit something we no longer desire for itself or desire only because we will it. It is still true that will at the beginning is entirely produced by desire..."

Mill

"We are told that a utilitarian will be apt to make his own particular case an exception to moral rules; and that when he is tempted to do something wrong he will see more utility in doing it than in not doing it."

Mill

"What I have in mind is money. There is nothing intrinsically more desirable about money than about any heap of glittering pebbles. Its value is solely the value of the things that it will buy; the desire for it is the desire for other things that it can lead to. Yet the love of money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but many people desire money in and for itself; the desire to have it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and goes on getting stronger even when the person is losing all the desires that point to ends to which money might be a means. So it is true to say that money is desired not for the sake of an end but as part of the end."

Mill

"the only reason for wishing that the purpose of virtue should become independent of pleasure and pain by becoming habitual is the fact that the influence of the pleasurable and painful associations that prompt virtuous behaviour can't be depended on for unerring constancy of action until it has acquired the support of habit."

Mill

"the will is a different thing from desire; and a solidly virtuous person or any other person whose purposes are fixed carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he has in contemplating them...he persists in acting on his purposes even if these pleasures are greatly lessened by changes in his character or the weakening of his [desires]..."

Mill

"For given the circumstances of the original position, the symmetry of everyone's relations to each other, this initial situation is fair between individuals as moral persons, that is, as rational beings with their own ends and capable, I shall assume, of a sense of justice. The original position is, one might say, the appropriate initial status quo, and thus the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This explains the propriety of the name 'justice as fairness'."

Rawls

"For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, of more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation. By major institutions I understand the political constitution and the principal economic and social arrangements."

Rawls

"In justice as fairness the original position of equality corresponds to the state of nature in the traditional theory of the social contract...it is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength and the like...the principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."

Rawls

"It hardly seems likely that persons who view themselves as equals, entitled to press their claims upon one another, would agree to a principle which may require lesser life prospects for some simply for the sake of a greater sum of advantages enjoyed by others...it may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper."

Rawls

"Justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many."

Rawls

"Now the second principle insists that each person benefit from permissible inequalities in the basic structure. [Each relevant person should] prefer his prospects with the inequality to his prospects without it. One is not allowed to justify differences in income...on the ground that the disadvantages of those in one position are outweighed by the greater advantages of those in another. Much less can infringements of liberty be counterbalanced in this way."

Rawls

"The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with the freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law."

Rawls

"The intuitive notion here is that this structure contains various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others. These are especially deep inequalities. Not only are they pervasive, but they affect men's initial chances in life; yet they cannot possibly be justified by an appeal to the notions of merit or desert."

Rawls

"These principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle prior to the second. This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages."

Rawls

"This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances."

Rawls

"a society is a more or less self-sufficient association of persons who in their relations to one another recognize certain rules of conduct as binding and who for the most part act in accordance with them...there is an identity of interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any would have if each were to live solely by his own efforts. There is a conflict of interests since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share."

Rawls

"each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others."

Rawls

"social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society." And "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and b) attached to positions and offices open to all."

Rawls

"Admittedly, it is possible that we are in a better position to judge what needs to be done to help a person near to us than one far away, and perhaps also to provide the assistance we judge to be necessary. If this were the case, it would be reason for helping those near to us first."

Singer

"I and everyone else in similar circumstances ought to give as much as possible, that is, at least up to the point at which by giving more one would begin to cause serious suffering for oneself and one's dependents—perhaps even beyond this point to the point of marginal utility, at which by giving more one would cause oneself and one's dependents as much suffering as one would prevent in Bengal."

Singer

"I begin with the assumption that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad."

Singer

"If everyone gave £5 to the Bengal Relief Fund, there would be enough to provide food, shelter, and medical care for the refugees; there is no reason why I should give more than anyone else in the same circumstances as I am; therefore I have no obligation to give more than £5."

Singer

"If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it. (emphasis mine)"

Singer

"It has been argued by some writers, among them Sidgwick and Urmson, that we need to have a basic moral code which is not too far beyond the capacities of the ordinary man, for otherwise there will be a general breakdown of compliance with the moral code...The issue here is: where should we draw the line between conduct that is required and conduct that is good although not required, so as to get the best possible result? This would seem to be an empirical question, although a very difficult one."

Singer

"On the more moderate principle, it may not follow that we ought to reduce ourselves to the level of marginal utility, for one might hold that to reduce oneself and one's family to this level is to cause something significantly bad to happen."

Singer

"The [argument] takes, firstly, no account of proximity or distance. It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away....The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further away."

Singer

"The principle makes no distinction between cases in which I am the only person who could possibly do anything and cases in which I am just one among millions in the same position."

Singer

"This conclusion is one which we may be reluctant to face. I cannot see, though, why it should be regarded as a criticism of the position for which I have argued, rather than a criticism of our ordinary standards of behavior. Since most people are self-interested to some degree, very few of us are likely to do everything that we ought to do. It would, however, hardly be honest to take this as evidence that it is not the case that we ought to do it."

Singer

"Unless there were a definite probability that by refusing to give one would be helping to bring about massive government assistance, people who do refuse to make voluntary contributions are refusing to prevent a certain amount of suffering without being able to point to any tangible beneficial consequence of their refusal. So the onus of showing how their refusal will bring about government action is on those who refuse to give."

Singer

"What it is possible for a man to do and what he is likely to do are both, I think, very greatly influenced by what people around him are doing and expecting him to do."

Singer