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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.

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
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Entertains
Politics
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Structure
Never
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More quotes by Herbert Spencer

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It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization-is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government, so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct.
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Science is organized knowledge.
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No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.
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The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.
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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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In societies of low civilization, there is no money.
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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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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.
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It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.
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Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm.
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Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
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Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is a part of nature.
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.
Herbert Spencer
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We must infer that a plant or animal of any species, is made up of special units, in all of which there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate into the form of that species: just as in the atoms of a salt, there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to crystallize in a particular way.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer