16 quotes
All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives.
Social Statics (1851)
Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.
Social Statics (1851)
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.
Social Statics (1851)
Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.
Social Statics (1851)
Education has for its object the formation of character.
Social Statics (1851)
Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.
Social Statics (1851)
Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
Social Statics (1851)
Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense.
Social Statics (1851)
He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.
Social Statics (1851)
Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.
Social Statics (1851)
Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation.
Social Statics (1851)
The ruling classes argue themselves into the belief that property should be represented rather than person — that the landed interest should preponderate. The pauper is thoroughly persuaded that he has a right to relief.
Social Statics (1851)
Evil perpetually tends to disappear.
Social Statics (1851)
To the clergy nothing is more obvious than that a state-church is just, and essential to the maintenance of religion. The sinecurist thinks himself rightly indignant at any disregard of his vested interests. And so on throughout society.
Social Statics (1851)
Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not.
Social Statics (1851)
The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.
Social Statics (1851)