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.
To play billiards well is the sign of a misspent youth.
Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.
The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.
Science is organized knowledge.
Is it stupidity or is it moral cowardice which leads men to continue professing a creed that makes self-sacrifice a cardinal principle, while they urge the sacrificing of others, even to the death, when they trespass against us? Is it blindness, or is it an insance inconsistency, which makes them regard as most admirable the bearing of evil for the benefit of others, while they lavish admiration on those who, out of revenge, inflict great evils in return for small ones suffered? Surely our barbarian code of right needs revision, and our barbarian standard of honour should be somewhat changed.
Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art.
Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.
The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.
It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.
No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.
When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.
To have a specific style is to be poor in speech.
Education is preparation to live completely.
The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.
The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains.
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.
Government is essentially immoral.