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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

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
Revolutions
Tranquility
Sober
Revolution
Quiet
Produce
Passion
Reason
Tranquil

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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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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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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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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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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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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
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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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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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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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.
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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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Power is not happiness.
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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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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.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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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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