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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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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
Light
Conditions
Deprived
Become
Cold
Soil
Shrub
Doe
Results
Destroyed
Dwindle
Everything
Dies
Harmony
Shrubs
Poor
Climate
Sickly
Evil
Organization
Outright
Lives
Constitution
Adaptation
True
Circumstances
Removed

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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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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
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Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.
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Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions.
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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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Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
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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.
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Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.
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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.
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Policeman are soldiers who act alone soldiers are policeman who act in unison.
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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.
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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
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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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This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
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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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The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
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So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented.
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No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all.
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When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.
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