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All Quotes by author - William Godwin
" Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind. "
Conscience
Government
Forget
" Act up to the magnitude of your destiny. "
Up
Magnitude
Destiny
" A just and a brave man acts fearlessly and with explicitness; he does not shun, but court, the scrutiny of mankind; he lives in the face of day, and the whole world confesses the clearness of his spirit and the rectitude of his conduct. "
Brave
Face
World
" As the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading should lead him into new trains of thinking. "
Education
Copy
Thinking
" A world of derived beings, an immense, wide creation, requires an extended scale with various ranks and orders of existence. "
Wide
Creation
Existence
" But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference. "
Never
Free
Youth
" During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism. "
Decision
Search
Truth
" Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. "
Duty
Capacity
Action
" England has been called, with great felicity of conception, 'the land of liberty and good sense.' We have preserved many of the advantages of a free people, which the nations of the Continent have long since lost. "
Lost
Long
Great
" Enthusiasm is always an interesting spectacle. When it expresses itself with an honest and artless eloquence, it is difficult to listen to it and not, in some degree, to catch the flame. "
Interesting
Enthusiasm
Flame
" Every boy learns more in his hours of play than in his hours of labor. In school, he lays in the materials of thinking, but in his sports, he actually thinks: he whets his faculties, and he opens his eyes. "
Thinking
Sports
School
" 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 from the very nature of man. "
Right
Nature
Every Man
" Everything in the world is conducted by gradual process. This seems to be the great principle of harmony in the universe. "
Great
Process
Harmony
" Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil. "
Everything
Understood
Sense
" Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting. "
Strength
Man
He
" Give energy, and mental exertion will always have attraction enough. "
Always
Will
Mental
" God himself has no right to be a tyrant. "
Right
Himself
God
" God is a being who is himself the cause of his own existence. His prerogative is to perceive before there was anything to be perceived. He is the creator of the universe; He operated upon nothing and turned it into something. "
Existence
Universe
Own
" Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake. "
Government
Vices
Mistake
" Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it. "
Injustice
Government
Effect
" Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions. "
Education
Government
Will
" Great changes cannot take place in the minds of generations of men without a corresponding change in their external symbols. There must be a harmony between the inner and the outward condition of human beings, and the progress of the one must keep pace with the progress of the other. "
Men
Change
Great
" Harshness and unkindness are relative. The appearance of them may be the fruits of the greatest kindness. "
Fruits
Appearance
Kindness
" 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. "
Life
Evil
Liberty
" He that loves reading has everything within his reach. "
Reading
Everything
Education
" Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment. "
Uncertainty
Forward
Hope
" How are the faculties of man to be best developed and his happiness secured? The state of a king is not favorable to this, nor the state of the noble and rich men of the earth. All this is artificial life, the inventions of vanity and grasping ambition, by which we have spoiled the man of nature and of pure, simple, and undistorted impulses. "
Man
Happiness
Life
" How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude! "
Society
Solitude
Different
" How nations and races of men are to be so governed as may be most conducive to the improvement and happiness of all is one of the most interesting questions that can be offered to our consideration. "
Men
Interesting
Improvement
" Human creatures, living in the circle of their intimates and friends, are too apt to remain in ignorance of the comments and instructions which may be made of what they say and do in the world at large. I entertain a great horror of this ignorance. "
Ignorance
Great
World
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