Herbert Spencer

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.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.

Science is organized knowledge.

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

All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.

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

Every cause produces more than one effect.

Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.

That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs as in private affairs we can clearly enough see in others though not so clearly in ourselves.

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

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

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.

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

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

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

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.

Evolution is a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations.

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

A jury is a group of twelve people of average ignorance.

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

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.

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

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

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

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

A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.

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

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

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

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.

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

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

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.

Government is essentially immoral.

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

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

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

Agnostics are people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatize with the utmost confidence.

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

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

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

Education has for its object the formation of character.

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

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

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

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is contempt prior to examination.

The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.

All socialism involves slavery.

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.

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.

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