Herbert Spencer Quotes
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Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.
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Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.
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... those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded... Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena - care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!
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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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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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The saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying.
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That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.
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We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.
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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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Science is organized knowledge.
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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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A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.
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The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is - a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.
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Any one who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that that tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints.