William Godwin Quotes

70 quotes in 909 categories

• Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external…
• Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.
• My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of…
• Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.
• Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.
• Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.
• Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.
• The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.
• He that revels in a well-chosen library has inumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavor.
• Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.
• Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows…
• Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.
• If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book,
• 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…
• The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
• Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.
• I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of…
• The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
• Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.
• Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a man at which nations tremble.

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