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

More quotes by William Godwin

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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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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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He that revels in a well-chosen library, has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavour.
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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. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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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A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.
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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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Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
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God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
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Power is not happiness.
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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
William Godwin
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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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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.
William Godwin
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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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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Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
William Godwin