Herbert Spencer Quotes

In societies of low civilization, there is no money.

Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.

Whatever fosters militarism makes for barbarism; whatever fosters peace makes for civilization.

The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains.

The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.

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

During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.

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?

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory it supported by no facts at all.

Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

There is a story of some mountains of salt in Cumana, which never diminished, though carried away in much abundance by merchants; but when once they were monopolized to the benefit of a private purse, then the salt decreased; till afterward all were allowed to take of it, when it had a new access and increase. The truth of this story may be uncertain, but the application is true; he that envies others the use of his gifts decays then, but he thrives most that is most diffusive.

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.

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

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

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

Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.

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.

Pervading all nature we may see at work a stern discipline , which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.

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.

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.

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

Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art.

We must infer that a plant or animal of any species, is made up of special units, in all of which there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate into the form of that species: just as in the atoms of a salt, there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to crystallize in a particular way.‎

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

If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.

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

Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight lines.

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.

Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Reading is seeing by proxy.

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

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

All socialism involves slavery.

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