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 SpencerRead
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Contempt prior to investigation prevents understanding and keeps a person ignorant.
Herbert Spencer's quote highlights the danger of forming opinions or dismissing ideas before fully understanding them. By showing contempt for new information without investigation, one forfeits the opportunity to gain knowledge and remain open-minded, ultimately leading to ignorance and a lack of personal growth.
Themes
ContemptIgnoranceInvestigationKnowledgeOpen-Mindedness
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about new scientific discoveries, this quote can remind participants to remain open to new ideas.
More from Herbert Spencer
All quotes βThat feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.
Herbert SpencerRead
Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.
Herbert SpencerRead
Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.
Herbert SpencerRead
This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.
Herbert SpencerRead
I emphasize the reply that the liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured, not by the nature of the governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on him.
Herbert SpencerRead
Similar quotes
If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too.
Tim FerrissRead
A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
C. S. LewisRead
The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time!
George Bernard ShawRead
One misunderstandin g is that if you do the right thing, then life's storms will stop. If you do the right thing, the storms actually get bigger. This is because they know they can't blow you down like they used to, and now it's going to take a lot more energy to find out if you are conscious.
David DeidaRead
We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.
Joshua FoerRead
If you make your prayers an expression of gratitude and thanksgiving for the blessings you already have, instead of requests for things you do not have, you will obtain results much faster.
Napoleon HillRead