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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.
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
Much
Scarcely
Reads
Allies
Proper
Genius
Learning
Adversary
Read
Ally
Spirit
Adversaries
More quotes by William Godwin
No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.
William Godwin
To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
William Godwin
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
William Godwin
Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.
William Godwin
The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
William Godwin
Power is not happiness.
William Godwin
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
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.
William Godwin
Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
William Godwin
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
William Godwin
God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
William Godwin
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
