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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.

William Godwin

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William Godwin
Age: 80 †
Born: 1756
Born: March 3
Died: 1836
Died: April 7
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Philosopher
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Wisbech
Cambridgeshire
Mankind
Forget
Upon
Usurpation
Evil
Anarchist
Individual
Judgement
Government
Private
Conscience
Judgment

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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
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The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
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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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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.
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All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there do that read write rise lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.
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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.
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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 virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.
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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.
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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.
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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
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Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
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The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
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It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.
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