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

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.
William Godwin

But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.
William Godwin

Every man has a certain sphere of discretion which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbours. This right flows from the very nature of man.
William Godwin

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

God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
William Godwin

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

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.
William Godwin

He that loves reading has everything within his reach.
William Godwin

If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such.
William Godwin


If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
William Godwin

In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question.
William Godwin

It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.
William Godwin

Justice is the sum of all moral duty.
William Godwin

Learning is the ally, not the adversary of genius... he who reads in a proper spirit, can scarcely read too much.
William Godwin

Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.
William Godwin

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.
William Godwin

Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him.
William Godwin

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.
William Godwin

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.
William Godwin