William Godwin Quotes
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.
Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
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.
Government can have no more than two legitimate purposes - the suppression of injustice against individuals within the community, and the common defense against external invasion.
Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.
To diminish the cases in which the assistance of others is felt absolutely necessary is the only genuine road to independence.
There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize.
The love of independence and dislike of unjust treatment is the source of a thousand virtues.
The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.
I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling.
It is necessary for him who would endure existence with patience that he should conceive himself to be something - that he should be persuaded he is not a cipher in the muster-roll of man.
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.
Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once had flesh, and motion, and a boundless variety of determinations and actions.
Love conquers all difficulties, surmounts all obstacles, and effects what to any other power would be impossible.