Quotes By Herbert Spencer

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

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.

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

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Education has for its object the formation of character.

A jury is a group of twelve people of average ignorance.

The behavior of men to the lower animals, and their behavior to each other, bear a constant relationship.

Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

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

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

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

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.

Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage".

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

All socialism involves slavery.

In science the important thing is to modify and change one's ideas as science advances.

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

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.

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.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

Every cause produces more than one effect.

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.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

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

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.