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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.

Herbert Spencer

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Herbert Spencer
Born: 1824
Born: April 27
Anthropologist
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Derby
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Gerbert Spencer
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More quotes by 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.
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The idea of disembodied spirits is wholly unsupported by evidence, and I cannot accept it.
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Do not try to produce an ideal child, it would find no fitness in this world.
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
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Music ministers to human welfare more than any other art.
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Government is essentially immoral.
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Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . .
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Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
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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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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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The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
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Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.
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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.
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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.
Herbert Spencer
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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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In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.
Herbert Spencer
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Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
Herbert Spencer
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There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
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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Much dearer be the things which come through hard distress.
Herbert Spencer