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Agnostics are people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatize with the utmost confidence.
Herbert Spencer -
To play billiards well was a sign of an ill-spent youth
Herbert Spencer
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Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.
Herbert Spencer -
The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society.
Herbert Spencer -
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
Herbert Spencer -
However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.
Herbert Spencer -
So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it is the neglect of science that is irreligious-it is the refusal to study the surrounding creation that is irreligious.
Herbert Spencer -
The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.
Herbert Spencer
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In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.
Herbert Spencer -
It is the function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the true consequences of their conduct.
Herbert Spencer -
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.
Herbert Spencer -
People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.
Herbert Spencer -
We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.
Herbert Spencer -
We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.
Herbert Spencer
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There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Herbert Spencer -
The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.
Herbert Spencer -
Let men learn that a legislature is not 'our God upon earth,' though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.
Herbert Spencer -
The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.
Herbert Spencer -
Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.
Herbert Spencer -
Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.
Herbert Spencer
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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
Herbert Spencer -
The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
Herbert Spencer -
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.
Herbert Spencer -
No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
Herbert Spencer