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

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
Implies
Previous
Execution
Meditation
Place
Firsts
First
Persevering
Thing
Considerable

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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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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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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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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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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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But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
William Godwin
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The most desirable mode of education, is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.
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Study with desire is real activity without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
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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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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
William Godwin
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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
William Godwin
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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
William Godwin
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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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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
William Godwin
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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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Invisible things are the only realities invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin