Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
William Godwin
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Animal
Literature
Demarcation
Taken
Bearings
Form
Grand
Human
Kingdoms
Humans
Forms
Line
Lines
More quotes by William Godwin
The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.
William Godwin
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
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
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
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
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
William Godwin
To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.
William Godwin
The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
William Godwin
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
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
Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
William Godwin
Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
William Godwin
Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
William Godwin
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
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.
William Godwin
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
We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
William Godwin
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
The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
William Godwin
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.
William Godwin
