Herbert Spencer Quotes
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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 most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.
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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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In societies of low civilization, there is no money.
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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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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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Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.
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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.
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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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Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
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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.
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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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Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
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Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.
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The existence of a first cause of the universe is a necessity of thought ... Amid the mysteries which become more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that we are over in the presence of an Infinite, Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.
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In assuming any office besides its essential one, the State begins to lose the power of fulfilling its essential one.
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People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.
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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.
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A nation's institutions and beliefs are determined by it's character.
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Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.
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Every cause produces more than one effect.
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Government is essentially immoral.
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An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.
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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.