Herbert Spencer Quotes

166 Sourced Quotes

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

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
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
It is not true that the facts of science are unpoetical; or that the cultivation of science is necessarily unfriendly to the exercise of imagination or the love of the beautiful. On the contrary science opens up realms of poetry where to the unscientific all is a blank.

Herbert Spencer
Be there be or be there not any other revelation, we have a veritable revelation in Science - a continuous disclosure, through the intelligence with which we are endowed, of the established order of the Universe.

Herbert Spencer
We conclude, then, that for discipline, as well as for guidance, science is of chiefest value. In all its effects, learning the meanings of things, is better than learning the meanings of words. Whether for intellectual, moral, or religious training, the study of surrounding phenomena is immensely superior to the study of grammars and lexicons.

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

Herbert Spencer
Of all antagonisms of belief, the oldest, the widest, the most profound and the most important, is that between Religion and Science. It commenced when the recognition of the simplest uniformities in surrounding things, set a limit to the once universal superstition.

Herbert Spencer
In assuming any office besides its essential one, the State begins to lose the power of fulfilling its essential one.

Herbert Spencer
Where there are no distinctions of structure there are no distinctions of function.

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
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.

Herbert Spencer
Government is essentially immoral. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works.

Herbert Spencer
This speck of animated jelly [amoeba] is at once all stomach, all skin, all mouth, all limb, and doubtless, too, all lung.

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

Herbert Spencer
It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.

Herbert Spencer
Devotion to science is a tacit worship — a tacit recognition of worth in the things one studies; and by implication in their cause. It is not a mere lip-homage, but a homage expressed in actions — not a mere professed respect, but a respect proved by the sacrifice of time, thought, and labour.

Herbert Spencer
Science is organized knowledge; and before knowledge can be organized, some of it must first be possessed. Every study, therefore, should have a purely experimental introduction; and only after an ample fund of observations has been accumulated, should reasoning begin.

Herbert Spencer
But for science we should be still worshipping fetishes; or, with hecatombs of victims, propitiating diabolical deities.

Herbert Spencer
As, to the religious, it will seem absurd to set forth any justification for Religion; so, to the scientific, will it seem absurd to defend Science.

Herbert Spencer
Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded treasures were found.

Herbert Spencer
Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.

Herbert Spencer
We have repeatedly observed that while any whole is evolving, there is always going on an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself; but we have not observed that this equally holds of the totality of things, which is made up of parts within parts from the greatest down to the smallest.

Herbert Spencer
The chief arguments that are urged against an established religion, may be used with equal force against an established charity. The dissenter submits, that no party has a right to compel him to contribute to the support of doctrines, which do not meet his approbation. The rate-payer may as reasonably argue, that no one is justified in forcing him to subscribe towards the maintenance of persons, whom he does not consider deserving of relief.

Herbert Spencer
The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual, must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race. In strictness, this principle may be considered as already expressed by implication; since both being processes of evolution, must conform to those same general laws of evolution... and must therefore agree with each other. Nevertheless this particular parallelism is of value for the specific guidance it affords. To M. Comte we believe society owes the enunciation of it; and we may accept this item of his philosophy without at all committing ourselves to the rest.

Herbert Spencer
Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

Herbert Spencer
Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

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

Herbert Spencer
Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas....

Herbert Spencer