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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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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
Works
Subjugate
Deals
Contaminated
State
Employs
Evil
Immoral
Means
Alike
States
Essentially
Government
Weapons
Mean
Objects

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In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.
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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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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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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.
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Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.
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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.
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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.
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
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Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.
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Marriage: A word which should be pronounced mirage.
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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
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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.
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Lusts are like agues the fit is not always on, and yet the man is not rid of his disease and some men's lusts, like some agues, have not such quick returns as others.
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Practical atheism, seeing no guidance for human affairs but its own limited foresight, endeavors itself to play the god, and decide what will be good for mankind and what bad.
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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.
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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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The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.
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We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
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