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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.

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
Religion
Right
Tyrant
Tyrants

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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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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
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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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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
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Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
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It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.
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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.
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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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.
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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.
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One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.
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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
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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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What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
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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.
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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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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
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