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

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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
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In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them.
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The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
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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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Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.
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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.
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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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Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
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Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
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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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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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Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
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Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.
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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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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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Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
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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.
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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.
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What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
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There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.
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