Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.
Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
The saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying.
Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.
The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
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.
Practical atheism, seeing no guidance for human affairs but its own limited foresight, endeavors itself to play the god, and decide what will be good for mankind and what bad.
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
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.
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.
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.
Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense.
Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
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.
Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.
Education is preparation to live completely.
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.
Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.
Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.
The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind.
The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.