William Godwin Quotes
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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Obey; this may be right; but beware of reverence.... Government is nothing but regulated force; force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade; the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.
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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
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Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.
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Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
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If admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.
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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
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Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.
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Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.
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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
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Power is not happiness.
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.
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If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.