Quotes from book
The Methods of Ethics

Name: The Methods of Ethics
Author: Henry Sidgwick

The Methods of Ethics is a book on ethics first published in 1874 by the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy indicates that The Methods of Ethics "in many ways marked the culmination of the classical utilitarian tradition." Noted moral and political philosopher John Rawls, writing in the Forward to the Hackett reprint of the 7th edition,

“The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

The Methods of Ethics (1884), p. 381

“Each person is morally obliged to regard the good of anyone else as much as his own good, except when he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 3, chapter 13, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)

“A universal refusal to propagate the human species would be the greatest of conceivable crimes from a Utilitarian point of view.”

Henry Sidgwick book The Methods of Ethics

Source: The Methods of Ethics (1874), Book 4, chapter 5, section 3 (7th ed., 1907)