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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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Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.
Herbert Spencer
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Science is organized knowledge.
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.
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However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.
Herbert Spencer
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There is no origin for the idea of an afterlife, save the conclusion which the savage draws from the notion suggested by dreams.
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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All socialism involves slavery.
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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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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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.
Herbert Spencer
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In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.
Herbert Spencer
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The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also only of a less intense kind.
Herbert Spencer
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Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
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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Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.
Herbert Spencer
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Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine.
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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Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world.
Herbert Spencer
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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