Quotes by Herbert Spencer

"Life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life."

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.

There is a principle that is a bar against all information and proof against all arguments, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance.  That principle is contempt prior to investigation.

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

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

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

Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.

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

This 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 favoured races in the struggle for life."

The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.