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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.

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
Assuming
Whenever
Consequence
Torpor
Produce
Imbecility
Trouble
Assumes
Government
Deliver
Thinking
Produces
Consequences

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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.
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The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.
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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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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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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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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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The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love 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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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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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Invisible things are the only realities invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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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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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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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.
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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.
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Study with desire is real activity without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
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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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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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