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

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What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
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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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All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there do that read write rise lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.
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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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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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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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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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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.
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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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Power is not happiness.
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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 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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Study with desire is real activity without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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