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If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

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
Infallibly
Collision
Struck
Truth
Must
Thing
Mind

More quotes by 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.
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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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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
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The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
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The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
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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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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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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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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them.
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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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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
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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
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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.
William Godwin
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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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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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.
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