Herbert Spencer quotes

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist renowned for his contributions to social theory and evolutionary thought. His concept of "survival of the fittest" became influential in both biology and the social sciences. He played a crucial role in developing and popularizing the idea of social evolution during the 19th century. Here are 129 of his quotes:

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.

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer

Every cause produces more than one effect.

Herbert Spencer

Education has for its object the formation of character.

Herbert Spencer

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Herbert Spencer

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

Herbert Spencer

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.

Herbert Spencer

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer

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.

Herbert Spencer

All socialism involves slavery.

Herbert Spencer

Science is organized knowledge.

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer

The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many in shallows and in miseries, are the decrees of a large, farseeing be.

Herbert Spencer

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

Herbert Spencer

With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.

Herbert Spencer

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

Herbert Spencer