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.
Herbert SpencerRead
Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight lines.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote compares the concept of right actions to straight lines, suggesting that just as there is only one way to be straight, there is only one way to act rightly.
Herbert Spencer's quote emphasizes the idea that moral actions can be judged in a similar way to geometrical lines. Just as a straight line is defined as the shortest distance between two points and is unique in its nature, right actions are singular and definitive, indicating that there is a universally accepted standard for what is considered right, without ambiguity or multiple interpretations.
Themes
RightnessActionsStraightnessPhilosophyMorality
In practice
Example use cases
When discussing ethics in a classroom setting.
More from Herbert Spencer
All quotes βNo 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
That 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.
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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.
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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.
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