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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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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
Littles
May
Little
Work
Pervading
Kind
Stern
Cruel
Discipline
Nature

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If on one day we find the fast-spreading recognition of popular rights accompanied by a silent, growing perception of the rights of women, we also find it accompanied by a tendency towards a system of non-coercive education--that is, towards a practical illustration of the rights of children.
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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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Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . .
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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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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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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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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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Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.
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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.
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An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.
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Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.
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The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many in shallows and in miseries, are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.
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Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
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A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.
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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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.
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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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Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.
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Every unpunished delinquency has a family of delinquencies.
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Government is essentially immoral.
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