Herbert Spencer Quotes
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All socialism involves slavery.
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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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To have a specific style is to be poor in speech.
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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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Evil perpetually tends to disappear.
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Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.
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During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.
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Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . .
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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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Liberty is not the right of one, but of all.
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Education is preparation to live completely.
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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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Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
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Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage".
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Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
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No one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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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 idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.
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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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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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A nation's institutions and beliefs are determined by it's character.
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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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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.