Date: 1783
Children's "minds, like a sheet of white paper, are susceptible to every impression"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"Again, the only means by which truth, however immutable in its own nature, can be communicated to the human mind is through the inlet of the senses. It is perhaps impossible that a man shut up in a cabinet can ever be wise"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"How can you induce him to be dissatisfied with his present acquisitions, while every other person assures him that his accomplishments are admirable and his mind a mirror of sagacity?"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"All kings have possessed such a portion of luxury and ease, have been so far surrounded with servility and falshood, and to such a degree exempt from personal responsibility, as to destroy the natural and wholesome complexion of the human mind."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"In this unequal contest, alarm and apprehension will perpetually haunt the minds of those who exercise usurped power."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"If considerations of inferior note be apt to mislead the mind, what shall we think of this most intoxicating draught, of a condition superior to restraint, stripped of all those accidents and vicissitudes from which the morality of human beings has flowed, with no salutary check, with no intelle...
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"The offspring of mind is daily sacrificed by hecatombs to the genius of monarchy."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"Mind is the creature of sensation; we have no other inlet of knowledge."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
In a just society "understanding would convert into a real power, no longer an ignis fatuus, shining and expiring by turns, and leading us into sloughs of sophistry, false science and specious mistake"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
The author can't understand an afterlife "where the mind, doomed to everlasting inactivity, shall be wholly a prey to the upbraidings of remorse and the sarcasms of devils, is so foreign to the system of things with which I am acquainted"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)