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The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.

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
Men
Mastery
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Faculty
Motivational
Control
Moral
Self
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Attribute

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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.
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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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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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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.
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Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
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We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
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This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
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Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.
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Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
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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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Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
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Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.
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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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The saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying.
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The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.
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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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All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.
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All socialism involves slavery.
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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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