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

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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.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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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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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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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
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But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
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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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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.
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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The most desirable mode of education, is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.
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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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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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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 great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
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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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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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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 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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