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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
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
Majority
Usually
Disclosed
Wrong
Majorities
Fact
Complementary
Facts
Survey
Past
Surveys
Must
Entirely
Blind

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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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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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It is the function of parents to see that their children habitually experience the true consequences of their conduct.
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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
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Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.
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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
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Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.
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In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.
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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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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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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.
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It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
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How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
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Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
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Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.
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A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization.
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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.
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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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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