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Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
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
Name
Nations
Happiness
Peace
Power
Men
Tremble
Desired
Security
More quotes by William Godwin
The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
William Godwin
The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
William Godwin
The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive the right in certain cases to do as we list and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. The first of these a just philosophy will probably induce us universally to explode.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
William Godwin
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
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
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.
William Godwin
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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.
William Godwin
Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
William Godwin
To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
William Godwin
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
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.
William Godwin
If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
William Godwin
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
William Godwin
He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
William Godwin
Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.
William Godwin
