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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
True
Circumstances
Removed
Light
Conditions
Deprived
Become
Cold
Soil
Shrub
Doe
Results
Destroyed
Dwindle
Everything
Dies
Harmony
Shrubs
Poor
Climate
Sickly
Evil
Organization
Outright
Lives
Constitution
Adaptation

More quotes by 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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Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.
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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A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.
Herbert Spencer
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The existence of a first cause of the universe is a necessity of thought ... Amid the mysteries which become more mysterious the more they are thought about, there will remain the one absolute certainty that we are over in the presence of an Infinite, Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.
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The society exists for the benefit of its members not its members for the benefit of the society.
Herbert Spencer
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If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?
Herbert Spencer
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Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life.
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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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.
Herbert Spencer
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A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
Herbert Spencer
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Of all the knowledge, that most worth having is knowledge about health! The first requisite of a good life is to be a healthy person.
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
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Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.
Herbert Spencer
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Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
Herbert Spencer
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This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
Herbert Spencer
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Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
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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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.
Herbert Spencer
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All socialism involves slavery.
Herbert Spencer