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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law

Pensées. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 10 (Memoirs Part I and Correspondence) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 10.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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Pensées.

“There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of (as contradistinguished from) morality.”

“As to people at large, I want little of their company, and much of their esteem.”

“Morality may well say of religion—Wherever it is not for me, it is against me.”

“No man appears to himself so bad as he is. No man acts against conscience in all that he acts amiss.”

“Prejudice and imposture always seek obscurity.”

“What is called legal style is the most execrable way of putting words together that ever was devised.”

“Ladies, like birds of paradise, have no legs; it is all feet with them.”

“Invention is learning digested: quotation is learning vomited up raw.”

“The constitutions of the Society of Arts, and of many other societies, are penned with conciseness and perspicuity. How happens this? Either there are no lawyers concerned, or their right-hand forgets her cunning. They forget that they are lawyers, and, seduced by example, become gentlemen, scholars, and philosophers.”

Conciseness is an apter term than brevity for a desirable property of style—conciseness is relative brevity.”

“A monarch is a sort of a creature that unites the properties of the Grand Lama and the Pope of Rome, not to mention an odd attribute or two that remain unclaimed by any other created being. Like the first of these, he is immortal: like the last infallible: as if this were not enough, he is omnipresent: no perfection that is imaginable is wanting to this god of our idolatry. Look at him well; turn him round and round; about and about; examine him limb by limb: a more accomplished deity at all points never trod upon dry ground.

“The plain truth of the matter would have made a poor figure in comparison of this description. It has pretensions to wit, and it might hope for the profits of servility. No king of the ordinary stuff that kings are made of could help being enchanted at the person pictured in this flattering mirror. An unpopular king might find a consolation for the contempt of his personal character in the adulation attached to his political character, which is that of his office. A wise king would turn with loathing from the incense: but a weak one might reward it.

“Greedy of incense without caring to deserve it: fond of any principle of awe that could serve to screen his person against attack—regardless whether it rooted there, glad to behold it planted by however ignoble hands; content to draw upon his office for a perpetual tribute of respect, without ever thinking of deserving it. Such is the condition of a king!”