William Godwin Quotes

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William Godwin

Profession : Writer

Birth : March 3, 1756

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

God is a being who is himself the cause of his own existence. His prerogative is to perceive before there was anything to be perceived. He is the creator of the universe; He operated upon nothing and turned it into something.

William Godwin

With respect to my religious sentiments, I have the firmest assurance and tranquillity. I have faithfully endeavoured to improve the faculties and opportunities God has given me, and I am perfectly easy about the consequences.

William Godwin

We have, all of us, our duties. Every action of our lives, and every word that we utter, will either conduce to or detract from the discharge of our duty.

William Godwin

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

William Godwin

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

William Godwin

Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.

William Godwin

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage.

William Godwin

Soundness of understanding is connected with freedom of enquiry; consequently, opinion should, as far as public security will admit, be exempted from restraint.

William Godwin

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.

William Godwin

When we look on the roses and gaiety of youth, the mournful idea of mortality is altogether alien to our thoughts. We have heard of it as a speculation and a tale, but nothing but experience can bring it home to us.

William Godwin

The question now afloat in the world respecting 'things as they are' is the most interesting that can be presented to the human mind. While one party pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms the existing constitution of society.

William Godwin

Act up to the magnitude of your destiny.

William Godwin

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.

William Godwin

How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!

William Godwin

We covet experience; we have a secret desire to learn, not from cold prohibition, but from trial, whether those things, which are not without a semblance of good, are really so ill as they are described to us.

William Godwin

I know not how it is: there are some businesses for which dullness seems to be a qualification.

William Godwin

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.

William Godwin

Religion is the most important of all things: the great point of discrimination that divides the man from the brute. It is our special prerogative that we can converse with that which we cannot see and believe in that the existence of which is reported to us by none of our senses.

William Godwin

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

William Godwin