Quote

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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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
Past
Come
Necessarily
Image
Thoughts
Present
Taken
Future

More quotes by 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 are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.
William Godwin
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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
William Godwin
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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.
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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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
William Godwin
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The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
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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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
William Godwin
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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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Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.
William Godwin
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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
William Godwin
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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
William Godwin