Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.


Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1

Jeremy Bentham Quotes

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … ...

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … ...

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … ...

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure … ...