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
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.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, one might quote this to emphasize the value of reading.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Extraordinary circumstances often bring along with them extraordinary strength. No man knows, till the experiment, what he is capable of effecting.
Honour your daughters, trust them and most importantly, educate them.
I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.
The basic premise that children must learn about emotions is that all feelings are okay to have; however, only some reactions are okay.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
A book is a garden, a party, a company by the way.
Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other 'studies' courses.
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