Quote

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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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
Men
Individual
Conduct
Firsts
Conviction
Without
None
Nothing
Duty
First
Trust
Take
Principles
Done
Clear
Right
Upon

More quotes by William Godwin

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What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
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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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Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.
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The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.
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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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Invisible things are the only realities invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
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.
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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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Power is not happiness.
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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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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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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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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.
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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
William Godwin
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
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