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Progress is not an accident, not a thing within human control, but a beneficent necessity ... due to the working of a universal law. So surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear so surely must man become perfect.

Herbert Spencer

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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
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Psychologist
Sociologist
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Gerbert Spencer
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More quotes by Herbert Spencer

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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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In societies of low civilization, there is no money.
Herbert Spencer
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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
Herbert Spencer
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Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
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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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.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.
Herbert Spencer
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Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their misdeeds.
Herbert Spencer
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How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
Herbert Spencer
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In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.
Herbert Spencer
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Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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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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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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.
Herbert Spencer