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" Till 1782, I believed in the doctrine of Calvin: that is, that the majority of mankind were objects of divine condemnation and that their punishment would be everlasting. The 'Systeme de la Nature,' read about the beginning of that year, changed my opinion and made me a Deist. "

William Godwin

Beginning

Nature

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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. "

" It is of no consequence whether a man of genius have learned either art or science before twenty-five: all that is necessary, or even desirable, is that his powers should be unfolded, his emulation roused, and his habits conducted into a right channel. "

" 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. "

William Godwin

Who

Strong

" Man is a being of a mixed nature; and, as there is no integrity without its flaws, so is there no man so knavish but that in some things he may be trusted. "

" 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. "

" In infamy, it is wisely provided that he who stands highest in the ranks of society has the heaviest load to sustain. "

" We cannot, any of us, do all the things of which mankind stand in need; we must have fellow-labourers. "

William Godwin

Mankind

Stand

" Government, as it was forced upon mankind by their vices, so has it commonly been the creature of their ignorance and mistake. "

" When the calamity we feared is already arrived, or when the expectation of it is so certain as to shut out hope, there seems to be a principle within us by which we look with misanthropic composure on the state to which we are reduced, and the heart sullenly contracts and accommodates itself to what it most abhorred. "

" The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues. "

" In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the most unqualified censure long before it was possible for me to hear the voice of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued. "

" I was famous in our college for calm and impassionate discussion; for one whole summer, I rose at five and went to bed at midnight, that I might have sufficient time for theology and metaphysics. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Superior virtue must be the fruit of superior intelligence. "

" 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. "

" Give energy, and mental exertion will always have attraction enough. "

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

William Godwin

Educate

Haste

" But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference. "

" What is there so offensive to which habit has not the power to reconcile us? "

" In contemplation and reverie, one thought introduces another perpetually; and it is by similarity, or the hooking of one upon the other, that the process of thinking is carried on. "

" I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling. "

" I am now in the full maturity of my age and vigor of my mind. Persons of various descriptions have repeatedly solicited me to turn my mind to dramatical composition. It was, indeed, the first amusement of my thoughts in my school-boy cell. "

" The world is all alike. Those that seem better than their neighbours are only more artful. They mean the same thing, though they take a different road. "

" The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children. "

" The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself. "

" The evils that arise to us from the structure of the material universe are neither trivial nor few, yet the history of political society sufficiently shows that man is, of all other beings, the most formidable enemy to man. "

" The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence. "

" It is one of the oldest maxims of moral prudence: Do not, by aspiring to what is impracticable, lose the opportunity of doing the good you can effect! "

" Was ever a great discovery prosecuted or an important benefit conferred upon the human race by him who was incapable of standing and thinking and feeling alone? "