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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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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
Thoughts
Present
Taken
Future
Past
Come
Necessarily
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More quotes by William Godwin

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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
William Godwin
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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
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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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
William Godwin
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If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.
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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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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Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
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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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
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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The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
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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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.
William Godwin
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In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them.
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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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
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But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
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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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.
William Godwin