Utilitarianism

• “The utilitarian notion...has the fatal limitation that it attempts to assign limits to what is, or may in the future become, useful, in accordance with a more or less arbitrarily restricted standard of what constitutes utility.”

• “Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”

• “Perfect the Will, the Mind, Feeling, their corporeal organs and their material tools; be useful to yourselves, to your own ones, and to others; and Happiness, insofar as it exists on this earth, will come of itself.”

• “Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.”

• “The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains.”

• “It's the flock, the grove, that matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.