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
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