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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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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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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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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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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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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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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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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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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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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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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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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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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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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Power is not happiness.
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But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
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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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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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He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound ... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.