Herbert Spencer Quotes
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist who set himself the task, in his ten-volume System of Synthetic Philosophy, of unifying biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics under the single principle of evolution. He coined the phrase survival of the fittest, applied evolutionary thinking to social and political questions, and articulated a classical-liberal political philosophy in The Man versus the State. The quotes below are attributed to Herbert Spencer, organized by topic.
Browse Herbert Spencer by topic
Herbert Spencer on Death
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“All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives . Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.”
Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1
Herbert Spencer on Freedom
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“No one can be perfectly free till all are free.”
Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations -
“Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.”
Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 3
Herbert Spencer on Knowledge
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Attributed to Herbert Spencer:
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
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“Education has for its object the formation of character.”
Pt. II, Ch. 17 : The Rights of Children -
Attributed to Herbert Spencer:
“When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.”
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“The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion . ... Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning ? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere s”
Lectures on Education delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, 1855, published in "What Knowledge is of Most Worth", The Westminster Review (July 1859) volume CXLI, p. 1-23, at p. 19 -
“Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1”
All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives . Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed. -
“Evil perpetually tends to disappear.”
Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 2 -
“Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 2”
Evil perpetually tends to disappear. -
“Pt. I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, concluding paragraph”
Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress, therefore, is not an accid -
“Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 3”
Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.
Herbert Spencer on Nature
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“Survival of the fittest.”
The Principles of Biology, Vol. I (1864), Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration
Herbert Spencer on Politics
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Attributed to Herbert Spencer:
“Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.”
Herbert Spencer on Time
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“Time : That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.”
Definitions , as quoted in The Dictionary of Essential Quotations (1983) by Kevin Goldstein-Jackson, p. 154
Things actually not said by Herbert Spencer
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Herbert Spencer but are in fact from someone else. Did Herbert Spencer say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Herbert Spencer say this? No.
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Commonly attributed to Spencer, information provided in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes and The Survival of a Fitting Quotation. (2005) by Michael StGeorge , indicates the attribution may have originated with the book [w:The_Big_Book_(Alcoholics_Anonymous)| A