Paraphrasing Herbert Spencer Quotes

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ~ Will Durant

QUOTES & SAYINGS OF RYAN MORAN- THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL MAN

Favorite Sayings of Ryan Moran: The World's Most Powerful Man

"Sometimes the withholding of a small part of the truth is not only wise, but prudent."

"There is one principle that bars all other principles, and that is contempt prior to investigation." (Ryan was fond of paraphrasing Herbert Spencer)

"What do you mean?", "How do you know?", "So what?"

"I don't need much, just one meal a day, a pack of cigarettes and a roof over my head."

"Well…, we must have different data bases, mustn't we?"

"This guy is more squirrely than a shithouse rat"

The CIA - you know, the 'Catholic Irish Alcoholics'

"That dumb fuck."

"Oye! A Jew and an Irishman - what a team!"

"Okay, everybody, up and to the right ten thousand feet," ( If things in general were not going
well. Refers to his jet flying days)

"Is that what you want to do?.....Are you sure?"

"Curiosity is self serving,"

"If you don't know where you're going, you will end up somewhere else."

"So…, what are you thinking?"

"I can do anything that I want, as long as I have the desire and I am willing to pay the price."
(His working definition of honesty)

"Well, what did you learn tonight?"

"Don't let your emotions get the best of you, and don't get too far out into your ~ Ira Teller

Education is preparation to live completely. ~ 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

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. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

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

If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. ~ Herbert Spencer

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. ~ 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

All Socialism Involves Slavery. ~ 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

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

[L]et us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic. The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. ... On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank. Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. Whoever will dip into Hugh Miller's works on geology, or read Mr. Lewes's "Seaside Studies," will perceive that science excites poetry rather than extinguishes it. And whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe will see that the poet and the man of science can co-exist in equal activity. Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies Nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake, does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who kno ~ 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

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

Reading is seeing by proxy. ~ Herbert Spencer

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. ~ 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

Zarathustra, the first to recognize that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist though perhaps more detrimental says: "Good men never speak the truth. The Good preach of false shores and false security. You were born and bred in the lies of the good. Through the good everything has become false and twisted down to the very roots". Fortunately the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness ; to desire everybody to become a "good man", "a herd animal", blue-eyed, benevolent, "a beautiful soul" - or, as Herbert Spencer wished - altruistic, would mean robbing existence of its great character, to castrate mankind and reduce humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some have tried to do! It is precisely this that men have called morality. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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. ~ 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

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

[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

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous. ~ Herbert Spencer

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. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

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

Consumptive patients, with lungs incompetent to perform the duties of lungs, people with defective hearts that break down under excitement of the circulation, people with any constitutional flaw preventing the due fulfillment of the conditions of life are continually dying out and leaving behind those fit for the climate, food, and habits to which they are born ... And thus is the race kept free from vitiation. ~ 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

Every cause produces more than one effect. ~ 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

In societies of low civilization, there is no money. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

survival of the fittest" - which was first coined by the economist Herbert Spencer ~ Douglas Brinkley

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

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. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

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. ~ 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

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action. ~ Herbert Spencer

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

We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together. ~ Herbert Spencer

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