William Godwin Quotes

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.

Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

The wise man is satisfied with nothing.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.

To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.

The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.

The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust; to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.

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.

Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.

Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.

God himself has no right to be a tyrant.

If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.

Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.

What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?

Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.

The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.

Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.

We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.

The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.

But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.

Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.

In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.

What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.

We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers; we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

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.

It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.

The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.

Power is not happiness.

Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.

He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.

There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.

A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.

The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.

The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.

My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.

Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.

Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.