Herbert Spencer Quotes & Sayings

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

As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result. — Herbert Spencer

Liberty is not the right of one, but of all. — Herbert Spencer

Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

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

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

Time is that which a man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him. — 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

Crime is incurable, save by that gradual process of adaptation to the social state which humanity is undergoing. Crime is the continual breaking out of the old unadapted nature
the index of a character unfitted to its conditions
and only as fast as the unfitness diminishes can crime diminish. — 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

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement. — Herbert Spencer

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

Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art. — Herbert Spencer

All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires. — 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

Every cause produces more than one effect. — Herbert Spencer

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

Science is organised 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

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

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

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

No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts. — 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

Reading is seeing by proxy. — Herbert Spencer

A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind. — Herbert Spencer

The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination. — Herbert Spencer

Policeman are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policeman who act in unison. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

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

If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die. — Herbert Spencer

There is no origin for the idea of an afterlife, save the conclusion which the savage draws from the notion suggested by dreams. — 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

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious. — Herbert Spencer

The saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying. — Herbert Spencer

Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight lines. — 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

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

Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world. — Herbert Spencer

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman. — Herbert Spencer

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

In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. — 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

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. — 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

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

I had a great dislike to the annoyances entailed by baggage; and it was always with some feeling of elation that I cut myself free from everything but what I could carry about me. Like children, portmanteaus and trunks are hostages to fortune. — 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

No physiologist who calmly considers the question in connection with the general truths of his science, can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization whatever: separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure: and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres. — Herbert Spencer

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

Education has for its object the formation of character. — Herbert Spencer

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

The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad. — Herbert Spencer

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

In the course of social evolution, usage precedes law; and that when usage has been well established it becomes law by receiving authoritative endorsement and defined form. — 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

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

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

During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art. — Herbert Spencer

Agnostics are people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatize with the utmost confidence. — Herbert Spencer

Education is preparation to live completely. — Herbert Spencer

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

{The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was not originated by Charles Darwin, though he discussed Spencer's 'excellent expression' in a letter to Alfred Russel Wallace (Jul 1866).} — Herbert Spencer

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

Every unpunished delinquency has a family of delinquencies. — Herbert Spencer

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life. — Herbert Spencer

If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making? — Herbert Spencer

Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world. — Herbert Spencer

The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence. — 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

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host. — 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

Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their misdeeds. — Herbert Spencer

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

Lusts are like agues; the fit is not always on, and yet the man is not rid of his disease; and some men's lusts, like some agues, have not such quick returns as others. — Herbert Spencer

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance. — 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

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

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 idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it. — 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

Evil perpetually tends to disappear. — Herbert Spencer

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