68 Herbert Spencer Quotes

Herbert Spencer quotes

1. It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force.

2. With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.

3. Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state ; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.

4. Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.

5. 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.

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

7. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale.

8. Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature - this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

9. 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.

10. Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

11. Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.

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

18. Every cause produces more than one effect.

19. The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.

20. Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

21. Music must take rank as he highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.

22. 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.

23. The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

24. 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.

25. Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

26. Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

27. 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.

28. The saying that beauty is but skin deep is but a skin-deep saying.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

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

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

36. The essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.

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

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

39. How often misused words generate misleading thoughts!

40. 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.

41. 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.

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

43. There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation. (quote attributed to Spencer is from the second appendix to the fourth edition of the Alcoholics Anonymous book.)

44. 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.

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

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

47. Evil perpetually tends to disappear.

48. 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.

1. During human progress, every science is evolved out of its corresponding art.

2. 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.

3. Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has himself acquired- any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a schoolbook, can be registered.

4. 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.

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

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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

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

12. 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.

13. The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.

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

15. 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.

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

17. All socialism involves slavery… That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?

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

19. 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.

20. The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.