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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.

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
Evil
Everything
Operation
Operations
Degree
Understood
Usually
Term

More quotes by William Godwin

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Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.
William Godwin
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As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
William Godwin
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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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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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
William Godwin
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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
William Godwin
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In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
William Godwin
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Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
William Godwin