Quote

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

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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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there do that read write rise lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.
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Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.
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The wise man is satisfied with nothing.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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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 proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
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The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
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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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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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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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Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.
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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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Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
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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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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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Study with desire is real activity without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
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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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