Herbert Spencer Quotes
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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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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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The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.
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All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.
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Education is preparation to live completely.
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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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Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
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During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.
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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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The chief arguments that are urged against an established religion, may be used with equal force against an established charity. The dissenter submits, that no party has a right to compel him to contribute to the support of doctrines, which do not meet his approbation. The rate-payer may as reasonably argue, that no one is justified in forcing him to subscribe towards the maintenance of persons, whom he does not consider deserving of relief.
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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.
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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.
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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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Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.
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Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.
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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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The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
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Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use.
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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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Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.
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The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.
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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.
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The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.
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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.