Quote

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

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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
Opinion
Tyranny
Peculiarly
Existence
Period
Odious
War
Kinds
Indignation
Character
Periods
Despotism
Kind
Atheism
Punish
Men
Revolution
Pregnant
Thoughts
Opinions
Engendered
Liberty
Attempt
Scrutinize

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Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.
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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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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.
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The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
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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 proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.
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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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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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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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
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Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
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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.
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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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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
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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.
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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.
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