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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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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
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Intrinsic
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Dna
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Atoms
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More quotes by Herbert Spencer

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Science is organized knowledge.
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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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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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We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
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.
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Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity…It is a part of nature.
Herbert Spencer
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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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When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.
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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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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The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
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.
Herbert Spencer
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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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How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
Herbert Spencer
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Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.
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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Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.
Herbert Spencer