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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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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
Wells
Well
Perform
Think
Tasks
Thinking
Capacity
Unless
Cannot
Power
Best

More quotes by William Godwin

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Power is not happiness.
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If admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.
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To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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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.
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The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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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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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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.
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It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
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Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
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.
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The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive the right in certain cases to do as we list and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. The first of these a just philosophy will probably induce us universally to explode.
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A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.
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 lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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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.
William Godwin
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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
William Godwin