Top Herbert Spencer Quotes

Herbert Spencer Biography

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.

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Herbert Spencer Quotes

Noiseless falls the foot of time That only treads on flowers.

Fall, Flower, Foot, Noiseless, Time

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.

Call, Evil, Immorality, Law, Men

This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.

Science, Survival, Evolution, Fittest, Implies

So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented.

Government, Long, Men, Save

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Impiety, Might, Pious, Volume, Volumes, Written

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.

Call, Government, Intense, Kind, Tyranny

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

Apart, Ethics, Existence, Solutions

The chief arguments that are urged against an established religion, may be used with equal force against an established charity. The dissenter submits, that no party has a right to compel him to contribute to the support of doctrines, which do not meet his approbation. The rate-payer may as reasonably argue, that no one is justified in forcing him to subscribe towards the maintenance of persons, whom he does not consider deserving of relief.

Compel, Party, Persons, Philosophy, Political, Towards

Anyone who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that the tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints.

Error, Errors, Impracticable, Life, Men, Preceded

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

Gains, Number, Numbers, Opinion, Presumption, Strength

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

Beauty, Deep, Saying, Skin, Skin Deep, Skins

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.

Citizens, Enjoys, Libertarian, Liberty, Lives, Restraints

Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.

Faculties, Growth, Humanity, Progress, Science, Use

Education has for its object to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature-this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

Children, Education, Men, Parent, Teacher

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.

Atheism, Guidance, Limited, Mankind, Play, Seeing

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

Pain, Pleasure, Raises, Tide, Tides

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory it supported by no facts at all.

Cavalierly, Facts, Reject, Theory Of Evolution, Wisdom

Whatever fosters militarism makes for barbarism; whatever fosters peace makes for civilization.

Barbarism, Civilization, Militarism

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

Science, Genius, Married, Highest, Produced

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.

Conditions, Giving, Inferiority, Law, Survival, Words

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Herbert Spencer Biography

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