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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.

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
Tell
Pernicious
Able
Maxims
Much
Temper
Would
Bear
Bears
Imagine
Consult
Teach
Contemporaries
Times
Maxim

More quotes by 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.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
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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.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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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.
William Godwin
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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.
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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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As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking.
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My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.
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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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One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.
William Godwin
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Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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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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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What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?
William Godwin
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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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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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