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Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Herbert Spencer Quotes

“The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants.”

WaySufferingForcePerfectMankindAccountsWork OutUselessBeastSchemesSectionsPreyHerdsPerfect Happiness
Book:Social Statics: Or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed
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“And yet, strange to say, now that this truth is recognized by most cultivated people — now that the beneficent working of the survival of the fittest has been so impressed on them that, much more than people in past times, they might be expected to hesitate before neutralizing its action — now more than ever before in the history of the world, are they doing all they can to further survival of the unfittest!”

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Author:Herbert Spencer
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“The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.”

IfsGivingLawCausesConditionsSurvivalOrdinaryStrongerThriveInferioritySurvival Of The Fittest
Author:Herbert Spencer
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“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 nature, this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.”

MenWellsChildrenCharacterFeelingsParentTeacherObjectsTastePerceptionAimSentimentsFormationHarmoniousCurbPropensityDormantParents And Teachers
Book:Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed
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“Any one who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that that tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints.”

IfsMenLifeMadeStatesActionPoliticalAsksStudySubjectsProductsRevolutionBecomingOrganizationErrorsDetailsEnormousRegulationSuperstitionsRestraintCatastropheFrench RevolutionMental PowerDrafting
Author:Herbert Spencer
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“Let men learn that a legislature is not 'our God upon earth,' though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.”

ThinkingMenSeemsEarthPurposeAuthorityLet MeInstitutionsServingTemporaryStolenLegislatureBorrowed
Book:Social Statics; Or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, & the First of Them Developed
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“For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life - to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this - a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one.”

PeopleShouldMayChildrenMadeGovernmentSocialJudgingOughtCitizensFitEducatedSettlingEducateCitizenshipPropositionsMoldDiscretionSocial LifeGood CitizenCompulsory Education
Author:Herbert Spencer
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“Any piece of knowledge which the pupil has himself acquired- any problem which he has himself solved, becomes, by virtue of the conquest, much more thoroughly his than it could else be. The preliminary activity of mind which his success implies, the concentration of thought necessary to it, and the excitement consequent on his triumph, conspire to register the facts in his memory in a way that no mere information heard from a teacher, or read in a schoolbook, can be registered.”

WayMindFactsProblemMemoriesLearningVirtueTeacherPiecesHeardInformationActivityMereTriumphExcitementConcentrationConquestPupilsRegister
Book:Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical
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“Even the absurdest report may in nearly every instance be traced to an actual occurrence; and had there been no such actual occurrence, this preposterous misrepresentation of it would never have existed. Though the distorted or magnified image transmitted to us through the refracting medium of rumour, is utterly unlike the reality; yet in the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or magnified image.”

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Book:First Principles
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