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“Jeremy Bentham argued that 'even in the best of times the great mass of citizens will most probably possess few resources other than their daily labour and, consequently, be always near indigence'. As long as working man was near indigence, hunger would remain an effective tool to goad him to labour. Bentham argued that an important task of government was to ensure conditions of deprivation, thereby guaranteeing that hunger would [be a constant motivation to work].”
― Linda McQuaig, Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth of Powerlessness in the Global Economy

“Bentham was an atheist and in no sense of the word could he be described as a theologian.”
― James E. Crimmins, On Bentham

“The simple idea is the location of an observer at the center and the observed at the circumference, whether the construction is a prison, workhouse, factory, or school. We can thereby, Bentham assures us, 'see a new scene of things spread itself over the face of civilized society - morals reformed, health preserved, industry reinvigorated, instruction diffused, public burthens lightened, economy seated as it were upon a rock.'
Bentham's pantopticon was never constructed, unfortunately for the future of mankind. who had to wait over a century and a half for television.”
― Robert Denoon Cumming, Human Nature and History: A Study of the Development of Liberal Political Thought

“Though Bentham's Panopticon was never constructed, the Westminster Review institutionalized the same democratic and scientific principle of public exposure:
'It were to be wished that no such thing as secrecy existed - that every man's house were made of glass. There would be the less reason to desire windows to his breast ... The more men live in public, the more amenable they are to the moral sanction. The greater dependence men are in to the public, ... the clearer the evidence comes out, the more it has of certainty in its results. The liberty of the press throws all men into the public presence ... Under such influence, it were strange if men grew not every day more virtuous ... A whole kingdom, the great globe itself, will become a gymnasium, in which every man exercises himself before the eyes of every other man. Every gesture, every turn of limb or feature, in those whose motions have a visible influence on the general happiness, will be noticed and marked down. The constitution of the human mind being opened by degrees, the labyrinth is explored, a clue is found out for it. That clue is the influence of interest ... It is put into the hands of every man. The design by which short-sighted iniquity would mask its projects are every day laid open. There will be no moral enigmas by and by.'
This vision of journalistic exposure provided the youthful propagandist with the prospect of becoming 'a reformer of the world.'
However, the moment arrived when the propagandist could no longer look forward to this prospect. He found he was a moral enigma to himself. In the course of struggling with this moral enigma, he became a liberal.”
― Robert Denoon Cumming, Human Nature and History: A Study of the Development of Liberal Political Thought

“Mr. Bentham would answer, that the knowledge which carries virtue along with it, is the knowledge how to take care of number one—a clear appreciation of what is pleasurable, what painful, and what promotes the one and prevents the other. An uneducated man is ever mistaking his own interest, and standing in the way of his own true enjoyments. Useful Knowledge is that which tends to make us more useful to ourselves;—a most definite and intelligible account of the matter, and needing no explanation. But it would be a great injustice, both to Lord Brougham and to Sir Robert, to suppose, when they talk of Knowledge being Virtue, that they are Benthamizing. Bentham had not a spark of poetry in him; on the contrary, there is much of high aspiration, generous sentiment, and impassioned feeling in the tone of Lord Brougham and Sir Robert. They speak of knowledge as something "pulchrum," fair and glorious, exalted above the range of ordinary humanity, and so little connected with the personal interest of its votaries, that, though Sir Robert does obiter talk of improved modes of draining, and the chemical properties of manure, yet he must not be supposed to come short of the lofty enthusiasm of Lord Brougham, who expressly panegyrizes certain ancient philosophers who gave up riches, retired into solitude, or embraced a life of travel, smit with a sacred curiosity about physical or mathematical truth.”
― John Henry Newman, The Tamworth Reading Room. Letters on an Address Delivered by Sir Robert Peel, Bart., M.P. on the Establishment of a Reading Room at Tamworth. by Catholicus [i.E. J. H. Newman], Etc.