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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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
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of their folly is to fill the world with fools.
—Herbert Spencer
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
All socialism involves slavery. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy anothers desires.
—Herbert Spencer
The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical
and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
—Herbert Spencer
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
—Herbert Spencer
People are beginning to see that the first requisite
to success in life is to be a good animal.
—Herbert Spencer
The wise man must remember that
while he is a descendant of the past,
he is a parent of the future.
—Herbert Spencer
Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
—Herbert Spencer
Topics: Life and Living, Friendship
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