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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
Common
External
Individual
Injustice
Two
Individuals
Government
Defense
Liberty
Suppression
Within
Invasion
Community
Legitimate
Purpose
Purposes
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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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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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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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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 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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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.
William Godwin
The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
William Godwin
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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Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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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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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.
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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
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In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
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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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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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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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