William Godwin
The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.
Human depravity originates in the vices of political constitution.
But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.
If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such.
Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil.
There is reverence that we owe to everything in human shape.
Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.
The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.
Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.Collection: Government
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.Collection: Thinking
The wise man is satisfied with nothing.Collection: Wise
No man must encroach upon my province, nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without pertinaciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve; but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.Collection: Exercise
Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Government
If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.Collection: Mind
The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: Benefits
Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.Collection: Self
Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.Collection: Book
We are so curiously made that one atom put in the wrong place in our original structure will often make us unhappy for life.Collection: Philosophy
Everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil.Collection: Evil
As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.Collection: Teacher
All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there; do that; read; write; rise; lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.Collection: Lying
Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.Collection: Power
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.Collection: Boys
It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn. The true object of juvenile education, is to provide, against the age of five and twenty, a mind well regulated, active, and prepared to learn. Whatever will inspire habits of industry and observation, will sufficiently answer this purpose.Collection: Children
Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Government
Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.Collection: Book
The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.Collection: Elements
The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.Collection: Virtue
Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.Collection: Peace
There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.Collection: Justice
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.Collection: Able
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 life, and all that life carries in its train.Collection: Depression
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.Collection: Men
A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.Collection: Country
The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust; to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.Collection: Men
By right, as the word is employed in this subject, has always been understood discretion, that is, a full and complete power of either doing a thing or omitting it, without the person's becoming liable to animadversion or censure from another, that is, in other words, without his incurring any degree of turpitude or guilt. Now in this sense I affirm that man has no rights, no discretionary power whatever.Collection: Men
Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.Collection: Science
Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.... An attempt to scrutinize men's thoughts and punish their opinions is of all kinds of despotism the most odious: yet this is peculiarly character of a period of revolution.... There is no period more at war with the existence of liberty.Collection: War
To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.Collection: Mean
Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands and perpetuate its institutions.Collection: School
Power is not happiness.Collection: Evil