Herbert Spencer Quotes
-
Government is essentially immoral.
-
We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.
-
Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has himself acquired- any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a schoolbook, can be registered.
-
The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.
-
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.
-
Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
-
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.
-
A nation's institutions and beliefs are determined by it's character.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The home is the most important factor in civilization, and that civilization is to be measured at different stages largely by the development in the home.
-
If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state-to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying toward its support.
-
Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.
-
People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.
-
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 presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
-
Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is a part of nature.
-
Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.
-
We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
-
Education is preparation to live completely.
-
Lusts are like agues; the fit is not always on, and yet the man is not rid of his disease; and some men's lusts, like some agues, have not such quick returns as others.
-
The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.
-
The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.
-
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.