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

More quotes by 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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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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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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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
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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.
William Godwin
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The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
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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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We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.
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Power is not happiness.
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In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
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There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.
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Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
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If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.
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Invisible things are the only realities invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
William Godwin
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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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Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
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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.
William Godwin
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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.
William Godwin
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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
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The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.
William Godwin