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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."

— Herbert Spencer

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Science

More quotes by Herbert Spencer

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

The Principles of Ethics (1897)

All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives.

Social Statics (1851)

The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.

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)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Herbert Spencer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.