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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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Gerbert Spencer
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More quotes by Herbert Spencer

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Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
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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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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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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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.
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Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art.
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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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
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Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
Herbert Spencer
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Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.
Herbert Spencer
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Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.
Herbert Spencer
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Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
Herbert Spencer
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Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.
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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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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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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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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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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
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The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.
Herbert Spencer