Quote

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

William Godwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Justice
Moral
Duty

More quotes by William Godwin

Image
The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
William Godwin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.
William Godwin
Image
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
Image
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
William Godwin
Image
God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
William Godwin
Image
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
Image
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
William Godwin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
William Godwin
Image
It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.
William Godwin
Image
The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
William Godwin
Image
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
Image
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.
William Godwin
Image
All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there do that read write rise lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.
William Godwin
Image
Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
William Godwin
Image
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
Image
The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
William Godwin