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 GodwinRead
Let no man despise the oracles of books! A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once had flesh and motion and a boundless variety of determinations and actions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Books are valuable sources of knowledge and experience, despite seeming lifeless.
In this quote, William Godwin emphasizes the importance of books as vessels of knowledge and human experience. He illustrates that although books may appear lifeless, they encapsulate the thoughts and actions of individuals who once breathed life into their pages, offering endless potential for learning and inspiration for those who engage with them.
Themes
BooksKnowledgeEducationLearningLiterature
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of education, one might quote this to emphasize the value of reading.
More from William Godwin
All quotes →It is one of the oldest maxims of moral prudence: Do not, by aspiring to what is impracticable, lose the opportunity of doing the good you can effect!
William GodwinRead
When the calamity we feared is already arrived, or when the expectation of it is so certain as to shut out hope, there seems to be a principle within us by which we look with misanthropic composure on the state to which we are reduced, and the heart sullenly contracts and accommodates itself to what it most abhorred.
William GodwinRead
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 GodwinRead
What are gold and jewels and precious utensils? Mere dross and dirt. The human face and the human heart, reciprocations of kindness and love, and all the nameless sympathies of our nature - these are the only objects worth being attached to.
William GodwinRead
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
William GodwinRead
Similar quotes
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
Edsger DijkstraRead
Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.
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Slavery is but half abolished, emancipation is but half completed, while millions of freeman with votes in their hands are left without education.
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School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.
John Taylor GattoRead
For a lot of us, awareness is merely realizing the extent to which we've been lied to all our lives. You start educating yourself. You become motivated; you follow your muse where it takes you. And you see the world in a different way. You start making decisions based on what you feel is right.
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Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?
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