Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencerwas an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 April 1820
mean government evil
Government is essentially immoral. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals, and the means by which it works.
government kind intense
The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also; only of a less intense kind.
men government long
So long as selfishness makes government needful at all, it must make every government corrupt, save one in which all men are represented.
mistake government civilization
It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last forever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization-is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential, but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government, so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct.
government immoral
Government is essentially immoral.
nature thinking government
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.
government risk reign
Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.
children government people
For what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life - to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this - a government ought to mold children into good citizens, using its own discretion in settling what a good citizen is and how the child may be molded into one.
alike almost beliefs centuries everywhere futility held insisted needs past perceive
Or it needs only to look back over past centuries and the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes to perceive an almost incomprehensible futility of the beliefs everywhere held and perpetually insisted upon
gentlemen lady nose
of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
darwin express mechanical races sought struggle survival
The survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.
free perfectly till
No one can be perfectly free till all are free.
benefit english-philosopher exists members society
Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.
bear constant english-philosopher lower men
The behavior of men to the lower animals, and their behavior to each other, bear a constant relationship.