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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.

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
Within
Invasion
Community
Legitimate
Purpose
Purposes
Common
External
Individual
Injustice
Two
Individuals
Government
Defense
Liberty
Suppression

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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Invisible things are the only realities invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
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The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
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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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Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
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There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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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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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
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Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.
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