Herbert Spencer Quotes
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The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.
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Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
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If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
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During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.
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A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
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No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free; let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all.
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When you take comprehensive, then we're dealing with certain issues like full citizenship ... And whatever else we disagree on, I think we would agree on that that's a more toxic and contentious issue, granting full amnesty.
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All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.
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When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.
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The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
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Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.
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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.
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Evil perpetually tends to disappear.
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Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.
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The defects of the children mirror the defects of the parents.
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Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.
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What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man -- to protect person and property -- to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak -- in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.
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There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.
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We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.
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Surely in much talk there cannot choose but be much vanity. Loquacity is the fistula of the mind,--ever-running and almost incurable, let every man, therefore, be a Phocion or Pythagorean, to speak briefly to the point or not at all; let him labor like them of Crete, to show more wit in his discourse than words, and not to pour out of his mouth a flood of the one, when he can hardly wring out of his brains a drop of the other.
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Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . .
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All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?
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Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
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People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.