William Godwin Quotes (36 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

William Godwin

William Godwin: 36 quotes 2 likes

Famous William Godwin Quotes

“It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient.”

William Godwin

Context: It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient. The lawyer never yet existed who has not boldly urged an objection which he knew to be fallacious, or endeavoured to pass off a weak reason for a strong one. Intellect is the greatest and most sacred of all endowments; and no man ever trifled with it, defending an action to-day which he had arraigned yesterday, or extenuating an offence on one occasion, which, soon after, he painted in the most atrocious colours, with absolute impunity. Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.

The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803)

“Mind modifies body involuntarily.”

William Godwin

Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 7
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
Context: Let us here return to the sublime conjecture of Franklin, that “mind will one day become omnipotent over matter.” If over all other matter, why not over the matter of our own bodies? If over matter at ever so great a distance, why not over matter which, however ignorant we may be of the tie that connects it with the thinking principle, we always carry about with us, and which is in all cases the medium of communication between that principle and the external universe? In a word, why may not man be one day immortal?
The different cases in which thought modifies the external universe are obvious to all. It is modified by our voluntary thoughts or design. We desire to stretch out our hand, and it is stretched out. We perform a thousand operations of the same species every day, and their familiarity annihilates the wonder. They are not in themselves less wonderful than any of those modifications which we are least accustomed to conceive. — Mind modifies body involuntarily.

“He that loves reading has everything within his reach.”

William Godwin

“To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.”

William Godwin

Vol. 2, bk. 7, ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“The political freedom of conscience and of the press, so far from being as it is commonly supposed an extension, is a new case of the limitation of rights and discretion. Conscience and the press ought to be unrestrained, not because men have a right to deviate from the exact line that duty prescribes, but because society, the aggregate of individuals, has no right to assume the prerogative of an infallible judge, and to undertake authoritatively to prescribe to its members in matters of pure speculation.”

William Godwin

Principles of Society, The Rights of Man
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“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.”

William Godwin

Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 6
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

William Godwin Quotes about men

“Men may one day feel that they are partakers of a common nature, and that true freedom and perfect equity, like food and air, are pregnant with benefit to every constitution.”

William Godwin

Vol. 1m bk. 1, ch. 3
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.”

William Godwin

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“Privilege is a regulation rendering a few men, and those only, by the accident of their birth, eligible to certain situations. It kills all liberal ambition in the rest of mankind, by opposing to it an apparently insurmountable bar. It diminishes it in the favored class itself, by showing them the principal qualification as indefeasibly theirs. Privilege entitles a favored few to engross to themselves gratifications which the system of the universe left at large to all her sons; it puts into the hands of those few the means of oppression against the rest of their species; it fill them witth vain-glory, and affords them every incitement to insolence and a lofty disregard to the feeling and interests of others.”

William Godwin

Book V, Chapter 11, "Moral Effects of Aristocracy"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“Ministers become a sort of miniature kings in their turn. Though they have the greatest opportunity o observing the impotence and unmeaningness of the character, they envy it. It is their trade perpetually to extol the dignity and importance of the master they serve; and men cannot long anxiously endeavor to convince others of the truth of any proposition without becoming half convinced themselves.”

William Godwin

Book V, Ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“The man that does not know himself not to be at the mercy of other men, that does not feel that he is invulnerable to all the vicissitudes of fortune, is incapable of a constant and inflexible virtue.”

William Godwin

Book V, "Of Education"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“The pleasures of self-approbation, together with the right cultivation of all our pleasures, require individual independence. Without independence men cannot become either wise, or useful, or happy.”

William Godwin

"Summary of Principles" 1.3
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

William Godwin Quotes about the truth

“The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred … Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expence of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my", to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?”

William Godwin

Vol.1, bk. 2, ch. 2
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.”

William Godwin

Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch.4
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

“Truth is powerful, and, if not instantly, at least by slow degrees, may make good her possession. Gleams of good sense may penetrate through the thickest clouds of error. But we are supposing in the present case that truth is the object of the preceptor. Upon that assumption it would be strange indeed, if he were not able to triumph over corruption and sophistry, with the advantage of being continually at hand, of watching every change and symptom as they may arise, and more especially with the advantage of real voice, of accommodated eloquence, and of living sympathies, over a dead letter. These advantages are sufficient; and, 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; open to him new mines of science and new incentives to virtue; and perhaps, by a blended and compound effect, produce in him an improvement which was out of the limits of his lessons, and raise him to heights the preceptor never knew.”

William Godwin

The Enquirer : Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature (1797), Essay XV : Of Choice In Reading, p. 130, (1823 edition)

William Godwin Quotes

“Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.”

William Godwin

The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803)
Context: It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient. The lawyer never yet existed who has not boldly urged an objection which he knew to be fallacious, or endeavoured to pass off a weak reason for a strong one. Intellect is the greatest and most sacred of all endowments; and no man ever trifled with it, defending an action to-day which he had arraigned yesterday, or extenuating an offence on one occasion, which, soon after, he painted in the most atrocious colours, with absolute impunity. Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.

World , Feeling , Sense

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

William Godwin

"Summary of Principles" 2.7
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
Variant: Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.

“Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.”

William Godwin

Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 2
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Perfection

“Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.”

William Godwin

Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Thinking

“… 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

"Of Choice in Reading", The Enquirer (1797)

Education , Thinking , Reading , Training

“Simplify the social system, in the manner which every motive, but those of usurpation and ambition, powerfully recommends; render the plain dictates of justice level to every capacity; remove the necessity of implicit faith; and we may expect the whole species to become reasonable and virtuous.”

William Godwin

Portable Enlightenment Reader, p. 477
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Motivation , Faith , Justice

“Anarchy, in its own nature, is an evil of short duration. The more horrible are the mischiefs it inflicts, the more does it hasten to a close.”

William Godwin

Book 7, Ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Evil , Nature

“Till mankind be satisfied with the naked statement of what they really perceive, till they confess virtue to be then most illustrious, when she more disdains the aid of ornament, they will never arrive at that manly justice of sentiment at which they seem destined one day to arrive. By his scheme of naked virtue will be every day a gainer; every succeeding observer willl more fully do her justice, while vice, deprived of that varnish with which she delighted to glow her actions of that gaudy exhibition which may be made alike by every pretender will speedily sink into unheeded contempt.”

William Godwin

Book V, Chapter 12, "Of Titles"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Justice

“The case of mere titles is so absurd that it would deserve to be treated only with ridicule were t not for the serious mischief they impose on mankind. The feudal system was a ferocious monster, devouring, where it came, all that the friend of humanity regards with attachment and love. The system of titles appears under a different form. The monster is at length destroyed, and they who followed in his train, and fattened upon the carcasses of those he slew, have stuffed his skin, and, b exhibiting it, hope still to terrify mankind into patient and pusillanimity.”

William Godwin

Book V, Chapter 13
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Hope , Appearance , Training , Love

“Mankind will never be, in an eminent degree, virtuous and happy till each man shall possess that portion of finstino and no more, to which he is entitled by his personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. The one will be delivered from the listlessness of tyranny, and the other from the brutalizing operation of servitude.”

William Godwin

Book V, Chapter 11, "Moral Effects of Aristocracy"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Personality , Happiness

“The pistol and dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue.”

William Godwin

Book IV, "Of Tyrannicide"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“A common mortal periodically selected by his fellow-citizens to watch over their own interests, can never be supposed to possess this stupendous virtue.”

William Godwin

Book III, Chapter 9
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“Government in reality, as has abundantly appeared, is a question of force, and not of consent. It is desirable that a government should be made as agreeable as possible to the ideas and inclinations of its subjects and that they should be consulted, as extensively as may be, respecting its construction and regulations. But, at last, the best constituted government that can be formed particularly for a large community, will contain many provisions that, far from having obtained the consent of all its members, encounter even in their outset a strenuous, thought ineffectual opposition.”

William Godwin

Book III, "Of Obedience"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Question , Communication , Reality , Appearance

“The reason a man lives under any particular government is partly a necessity; he cannot easily avoid living under some government, and it is often scarcely in his power to abandon the country in which he was born: it is also partly, a choice of evil; no man can be said, in this case, to enjoy that freedom which is essential to the forming a contract unless it could be shown that he had a power of instituting, somewhere, a government adapted to his own conceptions.”

William Godwin

Book III, "Of Obedience"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Freedom , Evil , Country

“No man must encroach upon my province nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without perniciousness, 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. He may exercise a republican boldness in judging, but he must not be peremptory and imperious in prescribing. Force may never be resorted to but, in the most extraordinary and imperious emergency.”

William Godwin

Book II, "Of Rights"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Exercises

“Nothing can be of more importance than to separate prejudice and mistake on the one hand from reason and demonstration on the other.”

William Godwin

Book III, Ch.1
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“Democracy is a system of government according to which every member of society is considered as a man and nothing more.”

William Godwin

Book V, Chapter 13, "General Features of Democracy"

Massacre is the too possible attendant upon revolution , and massacre is perhaps the most hateful scene, alllowing for its omentary duration, that any imagination can suggest, The fearful, hopeless, expectation of the defeated, and the blood-hound fury of their conquerors, is a complication of mischief that all which has been told of internal regions can scarcely surpass. The cold-blooded massacres that are perpetrated under the naem of criminal justice fall short of these in some of their most frightful aggravations. The ministers and instruments of law have by perform, and often bear their parts in the most shocking enormities without being sensible to the passions allied murders with the rudeness of an insulting triumph ; and, as the conduct themselves , in a certain sort, by known principles of injustice, the evil we have reason to apprehend has its limits. But the instruments of massacre are discharged from every restraint.

Book VIII, Ch.
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Democracy

“Ministers and favorites are a sort of people who have a state prisoner in their custody, the whole management of whose understanding and actions they can easily engross.”

William Godwin

Book V, Ch. 5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

People , Understanding

“The benefit of the governed is made to lie on one side and the benefit of the governors on the other.”

William Godwin

Book III, Chapter 9
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Lie

“Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. Right is the claim of the individual to his share of the benefit arising from his neighbors' discharge of their several duties.”

William Godwin

"Summary of Principles". 1.5
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)