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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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If admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.
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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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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 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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Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.
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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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The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.
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Obey this may be right but beware of reverence.... Government is nothing but regulated force force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.
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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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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.
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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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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.
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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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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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Study with desire is real activity without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
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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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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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My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.
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