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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

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
Species
Human
Humans
Perfectibility
Unequivocal
Characteristics

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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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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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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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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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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
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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.
William Godwin
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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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Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
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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.
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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.
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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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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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
William Godwin