Top 70 William Godwin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Justice is the sum of all moral duty.”

— William Godwin

2. “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.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

5. “The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.”

— William Godwin

6. “The wise man is satisfied with nothing.”

— William Godwin

7. “God himself has no right to be a tyrant.”

— William Godwin

8. “Books are the depositary of everything that is most honourable to man.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

10. “The great model of the affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children.”

— William Godwin

11. “Power is not happiness.”

— William Godwin

12. “There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

14. “Perseverance is an active principle, and cannot continue to operate but under the influence of desire.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

17. “The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.”

— William Godwin

18. “Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.”

— William Godwin

19. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

20. “My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

22. “If admiration were not generally deemed the exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lackey of poverty, the love of gain would cease to be an universal problem.”

— William Godwin

23. “Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.”

— William Godwin

24. “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

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

— William Godwin

26. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

27. “The diligent scholar is he that loves himself, and desires to have reason to applaud and love himself.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

29. “No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.”

— William Godwin

30. “Duty is that mode of action on the part of the individual which constitutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit.”

— William Godwin

31. “Books gratify and excite our curiosity in innumerable ways.”

— William Godwin

32. “Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.”

— William Godwin

33. “Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.”

— William Godwin

34. “Let us not, in the eagerness of our haste to educate, forget all the ends of education.”

— William Godwin

35. “The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.”

— William Godwin

36. “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

37. “But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of grating interference.”

— William Godwin

38. “Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.”

— William Godwin

39. “What can be more clear and sound in explanation, than the love of a parent to his child?”

— William Godwin

40. “It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.”

— William Godwin

41. “Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.”

— William Godwin

42. “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

43. “The proper method for hastening the decay of error is by teaching every man to think for himself.”

— William Godwin

44. “There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.”

— William Godwin

45. “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

46. “Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.”

— William Godwin

47. “What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed? It does not merit the name.”

— William Godwin

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

— William Godwin

49. “The lessons of their early youth regulated the conduct of their riper years.”

— William Godwin

50. “Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a man at which nations tremble.”

— William Godwin