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

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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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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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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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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
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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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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.
William Godwin
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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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In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
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We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.
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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.
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There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.
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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
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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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Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
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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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As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
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The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
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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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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