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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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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
Possible
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Individual
Mode
Action
Application
Part
Benefit
Best
Benefits
Capacity
General
Duty

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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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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.
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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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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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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.
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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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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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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
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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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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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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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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
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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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He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
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The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
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Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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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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Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
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