Herbert Spencer Quotes on Knowledge
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. This page collects quotes attributed to Herbert Spencer on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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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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“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”
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 -
“Definitions , as quoted in The Dictionary of Essential Quotations (1983) by Kevin Goldstein-Jackson, p. 154”
Time : That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him. -
“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.