Quotes from William Godwin

The wise man is satisfied with nothing.

Hope is in some respects a thing more brilliant, more vivifying, than fruition. What we have looked forward to with eager and earnest aspiration is never in all respects equal to the picture we had formed of it. The very uncertainty enhances the enjoyment.

During my academical life, and from this time forward, I was indefatigable in my search after truth. I read all the authors of greatest repute, for and against the Trinity, original sin, and the most disputed doctrines, but I was not yet of an understanding sufficiently ripe for impartial decision, and all my inquiries terminated in Calvinism.

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

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

Was ever a great discovery prosecuted or an important benefit conferred upon the human race by him who was incapable of standing and thinking and feeling alone?

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.

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

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.

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.

The true key of the universe is love.

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.

Harshness and unkindness are relative. The appearance of them may be the fruits of the greatest kindness.

The most desirable state of mankind is that which maintains general security with the smallest encroachment upon individual independence.

The extent of our progress in the cultivation of knowledge is unlimited.

In the two novels I have published, it was my fortune at different times, and from different persons, to hear the most unqualified censure long before it was possible for me to hear the voice of the public. But my temper was not altered, nor my courage subdued.

Self-deception is so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his actions to honorable motives when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed from some corrupt and contemptible force.

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

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.

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

Let no man despise the oracles of books! 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.

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.

Since it is one of the great attributes of our species to be susceptible of improvement and capable of experiencing the most beneficial changes, for this reason what are vulgarly called 'venerable establishments' will often range themselves in opposition to the best interests of the community.

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