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

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
Cannot
Encouraging
Perseverance
Principle
Active
Continue
Influence
Principles
Desire
Operate

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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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If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
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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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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.
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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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The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
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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.
William Godwin
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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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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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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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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.
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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Power is not happiness.
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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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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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.
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Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.
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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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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
William Godwin