Spencer Herbert Quotes & Sayings

The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

To play billiards well was a sign of an ill-spent youth — 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

The cruelty of a Fijian god, who, represented as devouring the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture during the process, is small compared with the cruelty of a God who condemns men to tortures which are eternal. — Herbert Spencer

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory it supported by no facts at all. — 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

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

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

In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack. — William Strunk Jr.

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

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

We must infer that a plant or animal of any species, is made up of special units, in all of which there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate into the form of that species: just as in the atoms of a salt, there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to crystallize in a particular way. — Herbert Spencer

Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm. — Herbert Spencer

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

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced. — Herbert Spencer

Science is organised knowledge. — Herbert Spencer

For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life - to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this - a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one. — Herbert Spencer

It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest. — John Kenneth Galbraith

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

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 future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by graduation. — Charles Darwin

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

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

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. — 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 has for its object the formation of character. — 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

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

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

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. — 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

Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man. — 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

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

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

Education is preparation to live completely. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation. — 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

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

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

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

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

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 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 home is the most important factor in civilization, and that civilization is to be measured at different stages largely by the development in the home. — Herbert Spencer

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

Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression. — 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

Science is organized knowledge. — Herbert Spencer

If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer." This — William Somerset Maugham

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

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

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

Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced. — 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

Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

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

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

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

The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control. — 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

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

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

Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted. — 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

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. — Herbert Spencer

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

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

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society. — Herbert Spencer

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

The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants. — Herbert Spencer

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

Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense. — Herbert Spencer

The law is the survival of the fittest ... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. — 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