Herbert Spencer Quotes

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

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.

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

The society exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the benefit of the society.

This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection", or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

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.

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.

The defects of the children mirror the defects of the parents.

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

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

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

All socialism involves slavery.

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

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

Education has for its object the formation of character.

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths.

The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.