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People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.

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
Good
Life
People
Requisite
Beginning
Animal
Success
Firsts
First

More quotes by Herbert Spencer

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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.
Herbert Spencer
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Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.
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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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Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
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The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
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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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Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.
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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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I emphasize the reply that the liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured, not by the nature of the governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on him.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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It cannot but happen?that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces? This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
Herbert Spencer
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The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.
Herbert Spencer
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The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
Herbert Spencer
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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
Herbert Spencer
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Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.
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.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer