Herbert Spencer Quotes

Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Every unpunished delinquency has a family of delinquencies.

The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out.

That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.

The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.

The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination.

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.

The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.

Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.

An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.

A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.

Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.

Every cause produces more than one effect.

Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad.

Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight lines.

Pervading all nature we may see at work a stern discipline , which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.

Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world.

Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Of all the knowledge, that most worth having is knowledge about health! The first requisite of a good life is to be a healthy person.

Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . .

The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains.

The "Creed of Christendom" is alien to my nature, both emotional and intellectual.

In societies of low civilization, there is no money.

A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization.

In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his own achievement more than of his subject always offend me.

Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.

It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry.

Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.

Whatever fosters militarism makes for barbarism; whatever fosters peace makes for civilization.

No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.

The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind.

Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.

During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory it supported by no facts at all.

The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.

Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.