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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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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
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Psychologist
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Derby
Derbyshire
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Gerbert Spencer
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More quotes by Herbert Spencer
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
Pervading all nature we may see at work a stern discipline , which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.
Herbert Spencer
In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.
Herbert Spencer
The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.
Herbert Spencer
Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
Herbert Spencer
Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
Herbert Spencer
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
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
The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.
Herbert Spencer
Science is organized knowledge.
Herbert Spencer
The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
Herbert Spencer
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
Government is essentially immoral.
Herbert Spencer
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.
Herbert Spencer
The child takes most of his nature of the mother, besides speech, manners, and inclination.
Herbert Spencer
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
A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.
Herbert Spencer
Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
Herbert Spencer
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
The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.
Herbert Spencer
