Great Throughts Treasury

A database of quotes

William Godwin

English Social Reformer, Philosopher, Journalist and Novelist

"Justice is the sum of all moral duty."

"All virtue is a compromise."



"No man is obliged to conform to any rule of conduct farther than the rule is consistent with justice."

"The grand instrument for forwarding the improvement of the mind is the publication of truth."

"A soldier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural thing."

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

"A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, emboweled and embalmed, but that once had flesh, and motion, and a boundless variety of determinations and actions."

"As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle."

"Books have been handed down from generation to generation, as the true teachers of piety and the love of God, that represent him as so merciless and tyrannical a despot, that, if they were considered otherwise than through the medium of prejudice, they could inspire nothing but hatred. It seems that the impression we derive from a book, depends much less on its real contents, than upon the temper of mind and preparation with which we read it."


"Bred in the lap of Republican Freedom."

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



"Cough, snow."




"For there is such a thing as a broken spirit."


"God himself has no right to be a tyrant."

"Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it."


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


"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."

"He that loves reading has everything within his reach. He has but to desire, and he may possess himself of every species of wisdom to judge and power to perform."

"He that revels in a well-chosen library has innumerable dishes, and all of admirable flavor."

"How can anyone have genuine happiness, unless in proportion as he looks round, and, behold, everything is very good?"



"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 unsupportable. So far as related to myself I resolved, and this resolution has never been entirely forgotten by me, to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer."





"In a well-written book we are presented with the maturest reflections, or the happiest flights of a mind of uncommon excellence. It is impossible that we can be much accustomed to such companions without attaining some resemblance to them."

"In cases where everything is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question."

"In proportion as men are made to understand their true interests, they will conduct themselves wisely."

"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 endeavored 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 colors, 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 practicing lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement."



"It is the property of truth to diffuse itself."




"Let us suppose a man to be engaged in the progressive voluptuousness of the most sensual scene. Here, if ever, we may expect sensation to be triumphant. Passion is in this case in its full career. He impatiently shuts out every consideration that may disturb his enjoyment; moral views and dissuasives can no longer obtrude themselves into his mind; he resigns himself, without power of resistance, to his predominant idea. Alas, in this situation, nothing is so easy as to extinguish his sensuality! Tell him at this moment that his father is dead, that he has lost or gained a considerable sum of money, or even that his favorite horse is stolen from the meadow, and his whole passion shall be instantly annihilated: so vast is the power which a mere proposition possesses over the mind of man. So conscious are we of the precariousness of the fascination of the senses that upon such occasions we provide against the slightest interruption. If our little finger ached, we might probably immediately bid adieu to the empire of this supposed almighty power. It is said to be an experiment successfully made by sailors and persons in that class of society, to lay a wager with their comrades that the sexual intercourse shall not take place between them and their bedfellow the ensuing night, and to trust to their veracity for a confession of the event. The only means probably by which any man ever succeeds in indulging the pleasures of sense, in contradiction to the habitual persuasion of his judgment, is by contriving to forget everything that can be offered against them. If, notwithstanding all his endeavors, the unwished for idea intrudes, the indulgence instantly becomes impossible. Is it to be supposed that the power of sensual allurement, which must be carefully kept alive, and which the slightest accident overthrows, can be invincible only to the artillery of reason, and that the most irresistible considerations of justice, interest and happiness will never be able habitually to control it?"
