Herbert Spencer Quotes

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.

- Herbert Spencer

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.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

- Herbert Spencer

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

- Herbert Spencer

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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.

- Herbert Spencer

Who indeed, after pulling off the coloured glasses of prejudice and thrusting out of sight his pet projects, can help seeing the folly of these endeavours to protect men against themselves? A sad population of imbeciles would our schemers fill the world with, could their plans last.

- Herbert Spencer

Every cause produces more than one effect.

- Herbert Spencer

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.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

Education has for its object the formation of character.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

All socialism involves slavery.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

- Herbert Spencer

Science is organized knowledge.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

Government is essentially immoral.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.

- Herbert Spencer

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

- Herbert Spencer

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

- Herbert Spencer

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.

- Herbert Spencer