Herbert Spencer Quotes
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Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
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The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths.
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Feudalism, serfdom, slavery — all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same — less government.
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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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The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
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How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." 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.
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To have a specific style is to be poor in speech.
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Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.
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All socialism involves slavery.
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This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
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No one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
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Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.
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When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.
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This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection", or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
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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.
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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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... those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded... Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena - care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!
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Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage".
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The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.
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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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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.
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Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
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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.