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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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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
Botanist
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Derby
Derbyshire
Spencert
Gerbert Spencer
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Freest
Government
Tyranny
Many
Intense
Kind
Rule
Least
Call
Less
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Objectionable

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When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.
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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
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Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady alone, but to be a man, a woman.
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A nation's institutions and beliefs are determined by it's character.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.
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Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.
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How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
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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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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.
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The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
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The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.
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The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.
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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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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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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.
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