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Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

Herbert Spencer

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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
Shortened
Universally
Ignorance
Lives

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It is the function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the true consequences of their conduct.
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If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
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This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
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Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
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Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their misdeeds.
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The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination.
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Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man.
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Let men learn that a legislature is not 'our God upon earth,' though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.
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However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.
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Marriage: A word which should be pronounced mirage.
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So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented.
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The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.
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In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.
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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.
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Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
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Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
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A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.
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The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.
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Lusts are like agues the fit is not always on, and yet the man is not rid of his disease and some men's lusts, like some agues, have not such quick returns as others.
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