Quote

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.

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
Free
Operations
Power
Civil
Make
Consequence
Men
Stand
Wise
Usurped
Liberty
Artillery
Opinion
Operation
Wisdom
Follows

More quotes by William Godwin

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Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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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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We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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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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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
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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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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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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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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
William Godwin
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
William Godwin
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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 subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
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