Herbert Spencer

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

All socialism involves slavery.

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

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

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

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.

Science is organized knowledge.

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

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

Education has for its object the formation of character.

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

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

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.

Every cause produces more than one effect.

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

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

Government is essentially immoral.

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.

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

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

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.

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

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

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

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.

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

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

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

Who indeed, after pulling off the coloured glasses of prejudice and thrusting out of sight his pet projects, can help seeing the folly of these endeavours to protect men against themselves? A sad population of imbeciles would our schemers fill the world with, could their plans last.