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The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.

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
Logic
Mathematics
Grossness
Elements
Sounder
Subtleties
Subtlety
Apprehension
Supply
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.
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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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In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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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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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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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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What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
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If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
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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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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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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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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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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 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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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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Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.
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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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