Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Herbert Spencer (English Polymath)

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. He was “an enthusiastic exponent of evolution” and even “wrote about evolution before Darwin did.” As a polymath, he contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, literature, biology, sociology, and psychology. During his lifetime he achieved tremendous authority, mainly in English-speaking academia. “The only other English philosopher to have achieved anything like such widespread popularity was Bertrand Russell, and that was in the 20th century.” Spencer was “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century” but his influence declined sharply after 1900; “Who now reads Spencer?” asked Talcott Parsons in 1937.

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

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

It was remarked to me by the late Mr. Charles Roupell … that to play billiards well was a sign of an ill-spent youth.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Youth

Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Marriage

Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Queens, Royalty, Kings

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Lawyers, Justice, Law

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Risk

Never educate a child to be a gentleman or lady only, but to be a man, a woman.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Education

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

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 naturethis is alike the aim of parent and teacher.
Herbert Spencer

Aggression which is flagitious when committed by one, is not sanctioned when committed by a host.
Herbert Spencer

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Friendship, Life and Living

When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has, the greater will be his confusion.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Knowledge

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Words

Not education, but character, is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Character

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.
Herbert Spencer

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.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Government

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
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Welfare

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Wisdom, One liners, Scientists, Creativity, Science

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.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Love

The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Perspective

Time is that which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Value of Time, Time Management, Time

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Heroism

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.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Ignorance, Questions, Arguments, Information, Wisdom

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.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Insults

The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Great, Action, Knowledge, Education, Act

Reading is seeing by proxy.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Reading

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Justice

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.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Evolution

The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.
Herbert Spencer
Topics: Health

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