Best Herbert Spencer Quotes

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Time is that which a man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.

A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

Love is life's end, but never ending. Love is life's wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding.

Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature -- a type nowhere at present existing.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious naturethis is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is -- a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.