Herbert Spencer Quotes
-
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.
-
During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.
-
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 there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.
-
Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm.
-
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.
-
The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
-
Education has for its object the formation of character.
-
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 preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There is no origin for the idea of an afterlife, save the conclusion which the savage draws from the notion suggested by dreams.
-
If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.
-
Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.
-
Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.
-
If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.
-
Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.
-
Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies - unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand - unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.
-
Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.
-
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.