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There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

Herbert Spencer

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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
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Psychologist
Sociologist
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Derby
Derbyshire
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Gerbert Spencer
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Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
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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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A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization.
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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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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.
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Pervading all nature we may see at work a stern discipline , which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.
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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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Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.
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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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No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all.
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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
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The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.
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Government is essentially immoral. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works.
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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.
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A nation's institutions and beliefs are determined by it's character.
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Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
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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.
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In societies of low civilization, there is no money.
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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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Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
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