Herbert Spencer Quotations

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.

The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage".

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.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

Love is life's end, but never ending. Love is life's wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding.

In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.

Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.

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.

A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.

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.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

The behavior of men to the lower animals, and their behavior to each other, bear a constant relationship.

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

Education has for its object the formation of character.

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation

No one can be perfectly free till all are free.

The 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 favored races in the struggle for life.

Or it needs only to look back over past centuries and the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes to perceive an almost incomprehensible futility of the beliefs everywhere held and perpetually insisted upon

of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.

There is one principle that can keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That is contempt prior to investigation.

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.

Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.

There is no origin for the idea of an afterlife, save the conclusion which the savage draws from the notion suggested by dreams.

The "Creed of Christendom" is alien to my nature, both emotional and intellectual.

So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it is the neglect of science that is irreligious-it is the refusal to study the surrounding creation that is irreligious.

The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.

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.

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

The essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.

With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.

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 pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.

Every unpunished delinquency has a family of delinquencies.

Evil perpetually tends to disappear.

No one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.

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.

The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.

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.

When you take comprehensive, then we're dealing with certain issues like full citizenship ... And whatever else we disagree on, I think we would agree on that that's a more toxic and contentious issue, granting full amnesty.

Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.

The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad.

Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm.

The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out.

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.

It is a commonly observed fact that the enslavement of women is invariably associated with a low type of social life, and that, conversely, her elevation towards an equality with man uniformly accompanies progress.

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.

Even the absurdest report may in nearly every instance be traced to an actual occurrence; and had there been no such actual occurrence, this preposterous misrepresentation of it would never have existed. Though the distorted or magnified image transmitted to us through the refracting medium of rumour, is utterly unlike the reality; yet in the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or magnified image.

Lusts are like agues; the fit is not always on, and yet the man is not rid of his disease; and some men's lusts, like some agues, have not such quick returns as others.

The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.

Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.

I had a great dislike to the annoyances entailed by baggage; and it was always with some feeling of elation that I cut myself free from everything but what I could carry about me. Like children, portmanteaus and trunks are hostages to fortune.

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.

No physiologist who calmly considers the question in connection with the general truths of his science, can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization whatever: separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure: and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres.

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.

All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.

The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.

Though, probably, no competent geologist would contend that the European classification of strata is applicable to all other parts of the globe, yet most, if not all geologists, write as though it were so.

The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.

The belief, not only of the socialist but of those so-called liberals who are diligently preparing the way for them is that by due skill an ill working humanity may be framed into well-working initiations. It is delusion. The defective natures of citizens will show themselves in bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of laden instincts.

Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.

In societies of low civilization, there is no money.

Government is essentially immoral. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works.

The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind.

So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented.

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.

Policeman are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policeman who act in unison.

It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization-is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government, so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct.

Practical atheism, seeing no guidance for human affairs but its own limited foresight, endeavors itself to play the god, and decide what will be good for mankind and what bad.

The more numerous public instrumentalities become, the more is there generated in citizens the notion that everything is to be done for them, and nothing by them. Every generation is made less familiar with the attainment of desired ends by individual actions or private agencies; until, eventually, governmental agencies come to be thought of as the only available agencies.

Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their misdeeds.

In assuming any office besides its essential one, the State begins to lose the power of fulfilling its essential one.

... 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!

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.

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.