Herbert Spencer Quotes

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

Herbert Spencer
He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.

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

Herbert Spencer
Evolution…is—a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite coherent heterogeneity.

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

Herbert Spencer
Every science begins by accumulating observations, and presently generalizes these empirically; but only when it reaches the stage at which its empirical generalizations are included in a rational generalization does it become developed science.

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

Herbert Spencer
Intellectual progress is by no one trait so adequately characterized, as by development of the idea of causation.

Herbert Spencer
A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization.

Herbert Spencer
Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.

Herbert Spencer
Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

Herbert Spencer
Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.

Herbert Spencer
Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.

Herbert Spencer
How often misused words generate misleading thoughts!

Herbert Spencer
It is the function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the true consequences of their conduct.

Herbert Spencer
Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

Herbert Spencer
Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.

Herbert Spencer
The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said — Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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

Herbert Spencer
That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved—who knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a Zoophyte or of a Man";—for him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable.

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

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
Reading is seeing by proxy — is learning indirectly through another man's faculties instead of directly through one's own.

Herbert Spencer
The supporters of the Development Hypothesis... can show that any existing species—animal or vegetable—when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.

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

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

Herbert Spencer
Using the phrase ancestor-worship in its broadest sense as comprehending all worship of the dead, be they of the same blood or not, we reach the conclusion that ancestor-worship is the root of every religion.

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