Herbert Spencer Quotes

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

The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

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

The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society.

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.

All socialism involves slavery.

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

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.

Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings; from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine.

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.

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature, this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

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

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?

Education is preparation to live completely.

To play billiards well was a sign of an ill-spent youth

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

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

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

Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is a part of nature.

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.

Science is organized knowledge.

To play billiards well is the sign of a misspent youth.

Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.

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

Feudalism, serfdom, slavery — all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same — less government.

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

Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.

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

Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.

All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.

The defects of the children mirror the defects of the parents.

It cannot but happen?that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces? This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

Let men learn that a legislature is not 'our God upon earth,' though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

Reading is seeing by proxy.

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

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

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.

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

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