Quotes About Herbert Spencer
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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. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas ... ~ Herbert Spencer
How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
If on one day we find the fast-spreading recognition of popular rights accompanied by a silent, growing perception of the rights of women, we also find it accompanied by a tendency towards a system of non-coercive education
that is, towards a practical illustration of the rights of children. ~ Herbert Spencer
Feudalism, serfdom, slavery, all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kind to rule, springing out of, and necessarily to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is the same in all cases - less government. ~ Herbert Spencer
Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources. ~ Herbert Spencer
Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man. ~ Herbert Spencer
Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. ~ Herbert Spencer
Marriage: A word which should be pronounced 'mirage'. ~ Herbert Spencer
Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge. ~ Herbert Spencer
We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. ~ Herbert Spencer
We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one. ~ Herbert Spencer
Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman. ~ 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
Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains. ~ Herbert Spencer
Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose. ~ Herbert Spencer
Anyone who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that the 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. ~ Herbert Spencer
The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it. ~ Herbert Spencer
Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. ~ Herbert Spencer
People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal. ~ Herbert Spencer
[Herbert Spencer] was ready in those days to give everything a trial; he even thought of migrating to New Zealand, forgetting that a young country has no use for philosophers. It was characteristic of him that he made parallel lists of reasons for and against the move, giving each reason a numerical value. The sums being 110 points for remaining in England and 301 for going, he remained. ~ Will Durant
survival of the fittest" - which was first coined by the economist Herbert Spencer ~ Douglas Brinkley
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents. ~ Herbert Spencer
The land monopoly always starts with conquest. Shot and shell are the coins of purchase, as Herbert Spencer said. Except by force of arms, nobody "owns" the earth, anymore than the moon, the planets, the stars themselves. ~ Robert Anton Wilson
the great aim of education,' said Herbert Spencer, 'is not knowledge but action. ~ Dale Carnegie
Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity ... It is a part of nature. ~ Herbert Spencer
Policeman are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policeman who act in unison. ~ Herbert Spencer
Surely in much talk there cannot choose but be much vanity. Loquacity is the fistula of the mind,
ever-running and almost incurable, let every man, therefore, be a Phocion or Pythagorean, to speak briefly to the point or not at all; let him labor like them of Crete, to show more wit in his discourse than words, and not to pour out of his mouth a flood of the one, when he can hardly wring out of his brains a drop of the other. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. 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 towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement of his rights. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
The present relationship existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, be denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself? ~ Herbert Spencer
Darwinism met with such overwhelming success because it provided, on the basis of inheritance, the ideological weapons for race and well as class rule and could be used for, as well as against, race discrimination. Politically speaking, Darwinism as such was neutral, and it has led, indeed, to all kinds of pacifism and cosmopolitanism as well as to the sharpest forms of imperialistic ideologies. In the seventies and eighties of the last century, Darwinism was still almost exclusively in the hands of the utilitarian anti-colonial party in England. And the first philosopher of evolution, Herbert Spencer, who treated sociology as part of biology, believed natural selection to benefit the evolution of mankind and to result in everlasting peace. For political discussion, Darwinism offered two important concepts: the struggle for existence with optimistic assertion of the necessary and automatic "survival of the fittest," and the indefinite possibilities which seemed to lie in the evolution of man out of animal life and which started the new "science" of eugenics. ~ Hannah Arendt
A nation's institutions and beliefs are determined by it's character. ~ Herbert Spencer
The liberty the citizen enjoys is to be measured not by governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the paucity of restraints it imposes upon him. ~ Herbert Spencer
Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost. ~ Herbert Spencer
Education has for its object to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature-this is alike the aim of parent and teacher. ~ Herbert Spencer
We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
Progress is not an accident, not a thing within human control, but a beneficent necessity ... due to the working of a universal law. So surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect. ~ Herbert Spencer
Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced. ~ Herbert Spencer
So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented. ~ Herbert Spencer
[James M. Buchanan] directed hostility toward college students, public employees, recipients of any kind of government assistance, and liberal intellectuals. His intellectual lineage went back to such bitter establishment opponents of Populism as the social Darwinists Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. The battle between "the oppressed and their oppressors," as one People's Party publication had termed it in 1892, was redefined in his milieu: "the working masses who produce" became businessmen, and "the favored parasites who prey and fatten on the toil of others" became those who gained anything from government without paying proportional income taxes. "The mighty struggle" became one to hamstring the people who refused to stop making claims on government. ~ Nancy MacLean
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 pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness. ~ Herbert Spencer
Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,
he walked through the woods one winter
crunching through the shinycrusted snow
stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was
and found the grass green and weeds sprouting
and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,
He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin
Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural
Selection that wasn't what they taught in church,
so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,
found a seedball in a potato plant
sowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin's Natural Selection
on Spencer and Huxley
with the Burbank potato.
Young man go west;
Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa
full of his dream of green grass in winter ever-
blooming flowers ever-
bearing berries; Luther Burbank
could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank
carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter
and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus -
winters were bleak in that bleak
brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts -
out to sunny Santa Rosa;
and he was a sunny old man
where roses bloomed all year
everblooming everbearing
hybrids.
America was hybrid
America could cash in on Natural Selection.
He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural
Selection and the influence of the mighty deadJohn Dos Passos
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.
(Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866) ~ Charles Darwin
However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible. ~ Herbert Spencer
In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances. ~ Herbert Spencer
The white light of truth, in traversing the many sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry. ~ Herbert Spencer
Reading is seeing by proxy. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
The greatest artists, saints, philosophers, and, until quite recent times, scientists ... have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid ... I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake, and Dostoevsky than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge
Increasing power of a growing administrative organization is accompanied by decreasing power of the rest of the society to resist its further growth and control. ~ Herbert Spencer
To play billiards well is the sign of a misspent youth. ~ 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
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
Education is preparation to live completely. ~ Herbert Spencer
The "Creed of Christendom" is alien to my nature, both emotional and intellectual. ~ Herbert Spencer
A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance. ~ Herbert Spencer
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ~ Will Durant
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
No man is equal to his book. All the best products of his mental activity go into his book, where they come separated from the mass of inferior products with which they are mingled in his daily talk. ~ Herbert Spencer
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
Of all the knowledge, that most worth having is knowledge about health! The first requisite of a good life is to be a healthy person. ~ Herbert Spencer
And yet, strange to say, now that the truth [of natural selection] is recognized by most cultivated people ... now more than ever, in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further the survival of the unfittest. ~ Herbert Spencer
All Socialism Involves Slavery. ~ Herbert Spencer
The defects of the children mirror the defects of the parents. ~ Herbert Spencer
Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life. ~ Herbert Spencer
What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. ~ Herbert Spencer
In literary art, as in the art of the architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the artist is thinking of his own achievement more than of his subject always offend me. ~ Herbert Spencer
Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect. ~ Herbert Spencer
It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
Education has for its object the formation of character. ~ Herbert Spencer
Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. ~ Herbert Spencer
In societies of low civilization, there is no money. ~ Herbert Spencer
All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires. ~ Herbert Spencer
The impersonal aspect [of God] (Nirakara, Nirguna) is called Brahman, or 'unknowable' by Herbert Spencer, 'will' by Schopenhauer, Absolute Noumenon by some 'substance' by Spinoza. The personal aspect (Sakara) of that Being is termed 'Ishvara' or Allah, Hari, Jehova, Father in Heaven, Buddha, Siva, etc. Just as vapour or steam is formless, so also God is formless in His unmanifested or transcendental state. ~ Sivananda
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. ~ Herbert Spencer
Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. ~ Herbert Spencer
Science" as a prejudice. - It follows from the laws of order of rankle that scholars, insofar as they belong to the spiritual middle class, can never catch sight of the really great problems and question marks; moreover, their courage and their eyes simply do not reach that far - and above all, their needs which led them to become scholars in the first place, their inmost assumptions and desires that things might be such and such, their fears and hopes all come to rest and are satisfied too soon. Take, for example, that pedantic Englishman, Herbert Spencer. What makes him "enthuse" in his way and then leads him to draw a line of hope, a horizon of desirability - that eventual reconciliation of "egoism and altruism" about which he raves - almost nauseates the likes of us; a human race that adopted such Spencerian perspectives as its ultimate perspectives would seem to us worthy of contempt, of annihilation! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination. ~ Herbert Spencer
To play billiards well was a sign of an ill-spent youth ~ Herbert Spencer
Every cause produces more than one effect. ~ 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
Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror. ~ Herbert Spencer
In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel. ~ Jonathan Sacks
Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions. ~ Herbert Spencer
During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art. ~ Herbert Spencer
People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end. ~ Herbert Spencer
