Herbert Spencer Quotes
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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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Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.
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The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad.
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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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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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All socialism involves slavery.
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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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Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.
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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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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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Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.
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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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... 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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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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No one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
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Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
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Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.
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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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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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Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.
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The cruelty of a Fijian god, who, represented as devouring the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during the process, is small compared with the cruelty of a God who condemns men to tortures which are eternal.
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This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
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To have a specific style is to be poor in speech.
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We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.