Quote

If admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.

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
Problem
Cease
Would
Generally
Lackey
Love
Gains
Lackeys
Property
Deemed
Constant
Exclusive
Universal
Admiration
Poverty
Contempt
Rich
Gain

More quotes by William Godwin

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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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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.
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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If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
William Godwin
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The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
William Godwin
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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
William Godwin
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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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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
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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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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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 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.
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
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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.
William Godwin
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
William Godwin
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
William Godwin