233 Quotes by Herbert Spencer

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

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

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die."

"Education is preparation to live completely."

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

"Reading is seeing by proxy."

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

"To have a specific style is to be poor in speech."

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

"Anyone who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that the 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."