198 Quotes by William Godwin

Invisible things are the only realities; invisible things alone are the things that shall remain.

He that revels in a well-chosen library has inumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavor.

To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation is the sentiment of a barbarian.

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.

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

If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book,

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.

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.

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.