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Power is not happiness.

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
Happiness
Evil
Power

More quotes by William Godwin

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Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.
William Godwin
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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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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
William Godwin
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But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
William Godwin
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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
William Godwin
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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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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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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.
William Godwin
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A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.
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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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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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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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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
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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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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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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
William Godwin
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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