Herbert Spencer Quotes - Page 2

Education is preparation to live completely.

Science is organized knowledge.

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

Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.

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

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.

Feudalism, serfdom, slavery — all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same — less government.

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

Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage".

Reading is seeing by proxy.

Government is essentially immoral.

The belief, not only of the socialist but of those so-called liberals who are diligently preparing the way for them is that by due skill an ill working humanity may be framed into well-working initiations. It is delusion. The defective natures of citizens will show themselves in bad acting of whatever social structure they are arranged into. There is no political alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of laden instincts.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

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

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

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

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.

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

Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.

The existence of a first cause of the universe is a necessity of thought ... Amid the mysteries which become more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that we are over in the presence of an Infinite, Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.

Of all the knowledge, that most worth having is knowledge about health! The first requisite of a good life is to be a healthy person.

Every cause produces more than one effect.

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

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