William Godwin Quotes

64 Sourced Quotes

Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.

William Godwin
Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

William Godwin
It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.

William Godwin
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.

William Godwin
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
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.

William Godwin
As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.

William Godwin
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
We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.

William Godwin
Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.

William Godwin
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
In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.

William Godwin
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.

William Godwin
The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.

William Godwin
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.

William Godwin
By right, as the word is employed in this subject, has always been understood discretion, that is, a full and complete power of either doing a thing or omitting it, without the person's becoming liable to animadversion or censure from another, that is, in other words, without his incurring any degree of turpitude or guilt. Now in this sense I affirm that man has no rights, no discretionary power whatever.

William Godwin
Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.

William Godwin
No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.

William Godwin
The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.

William Godwin
What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?

William Godwin
There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.

William Godwin
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
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.

William Godwin
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
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.

William Godwin
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.

William Godwin
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.

William Godwin
Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

William Godwin
Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.

William Godwin
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

William Godwin