Quotes from Herbert Spencer

Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.

Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.

In the supremacy of self-control consists one of the perfections of the ideal man.

So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented.

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.

In societies of low civilization, there is no money.

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

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.

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.

Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.

Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm.

Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.

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.

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.

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

The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.

It must be admitted that the conception of virtue cannot be separated from the conception of happiness-producing conduct.

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

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.

In assuming any office besides its essential one, the State begins to lose the power of fulfilling its essential one.

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

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.

Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge.

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.