William Godwin Quotes (48 Quotes)

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

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

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

Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.

God himself has no right to be a tyrant.

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.

There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape.

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

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.

Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.

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

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

The most desirable mode of education. . . . is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.

Trust the student in a certain degree with himself. Suffer him in some instances to select his own course of reading. There is danger that there should be something to studied and monotonous in the selection we should make for him. Suffer him to wander through the wilds of literature.

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.

Books have been handed down from generation to generation, as the true teachers of piety and the love of God, that represent him as so merciless and tyrannical a despot, that, if they were considered otherwise than through the medium of prejudice, they could inspire nothing but hatred. It seems that the impression we derive from a book, depends much less on its real contents, than upon the temper of mind and preparation with which we read it.

The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.

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.

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.

Obey this may be right but beware of reverence. Government is nothing but regulated force force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.

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.

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

Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

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.

Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.

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

Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.

They held it their duty to live but for their country.

I know many men who are misanthropes, and profess to look down with disdain on their species. My creed is of an opposite character. All that we observe that is best and most excellent in the intellectual world, is man and it is easy to perceive in many cases, that the believer in mysteries does little more, than dress up his deity in the choicest of human attributes and qualifications. I have lived among, and I feel an ardent interest in and love for, my brethren of mankind. This sentiment, which I regard with complacency in my own breast, I would gladly cherish in others.

To him it is an ocean, unfathomable, and without a shore.

Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.

Make men wise, and by that very operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

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 to the general happiness of mankind.

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

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

The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.

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.

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

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

A soldier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural thing.

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.

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

If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.

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