#utilitarian

In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty... to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to mankind. It by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone he pleases, whomever happens along, or to steal from the market every day. Further, I recall developing in my article the idea that all... well, let's say, the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhammads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law, they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the ancient law) could help them. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#genius #greatness #the-ends-justify-the-means #utilitarianism #marketing

In every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself. ↗

— Neil Postman

#technology #utilitarianism #age

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

#both #feature #humanitarian #lot #masses

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

#art #beautiful #become #deception #events

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria. ↗

— David Lodge

#cathedrals #criteria #existence #justify #modern

Utilitarianism: If we Britiash were Utilitarians we would have to believe that imprisoning the innocent and torturing suspects was justified if the Home Secretary thought it a good thing for our peace of mind. ↗

— William Donaldson

#home

All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatised injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#racism #sexism #social-injustice #utilitarianism #equality

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

#care #covers #dressing #i #like

If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#men

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." (Frauds on the Fairies, 1853) ↗

— Charles Dickens

#utilitarianism #age