Frases de William Godwin

William Godwin foi um jornalista inglês, filósofo político e novelista. Ele é considerado um dos primeiros expoentes do utilitarismo. Godwin é mais conhecido por dois livros que ele publicou no intervalo de um ano: Inquérito acerca da justiça política, um ataque às instituições políticas, e As coisas como elas são ou As Aventuras de Caleb Williams, que ataca os privilégios da aristocracia, mas também é virtualmente o primeiro romance de mistério. Baseado no sucesso de ambos, Godwin tornou-se uma figura proeminente entre os círculos radicais de Londres na década de 1790. Na reação conservadora subsequente ao radicalismo britânico, Godwin foi atacado, em parte por causa de seu casamento com a escritora feminista pioneira Mary Wollstonecraft em 1797 e sua cândida biografia sobre ela após sua morte; sua filha Mary Godwin seria autora de Frankenstein

e se casaria com o poeta Percy Bysshe Shelley. Godwin foi autor de uma extensa obra, do romance ao texto histórico e demográfico. Com sua segunda esposa, Mary Jane Clairmont, ele escreveu o livro infantil Primer, baseado na história clássica e bíblica, que publicou junto com o escrito Tales from Shakespeare de Charles e Mary Lamb's. Utilizando o pseudônimo de Edward Baldwin, ele escreveu uma grande variedade de livros para crianças, incluindo uma versão de Jack e o Feijão Falante. Ele também teve uma considerável influência na literatura britânica e na cultura literária européia.

Ele também foi considerado um dos criadores do Anarquismo, por ter tido bastante influência com seu pensamento utilitarista Wikipedia  

✵ 3. Março 1756 – 7. Abril 1836
William Godwin photo
William Godwin: 37   citações 0   Curtidas

William Godwin frases e citações

“Sempre que o governo decide nos livrar da dificuldade de pensar por nós mesmos, as únicas consequências que produz são as de torpor e imbecilidade.”

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners (1793) - segundo volume, cap. 1 - página 143 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=r0FKAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA143, Printed for Luke White.

William Godwin: Frases em inglês

“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.”

Contexto: 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 endeavoured 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 colours, 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 practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.

The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803)

“Mind modifies body involuntarily.”

Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 7
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
Contexto: Let us here return to the sublime conjecture of Franklin, that “mind will one day become omnipotent over matter.” If over all other matter, why not over the matter of our own bodies? If over matter at ever so great a distance, why not over matter which, however ignorant we may be of the tie that connects it with the thinking principle, we always carry about with us, and which is in all cases the medium of communication between that principle and the external universe? In a word, why may not man be one day immortal?
The different cases in which thought modifies the external universe are obvious to all. It is modified by our voluntary thoughts or design. We desire to stretch out our hand, and it is stretched out. We perform a thousand operations of the same species every day, and their familiarity annihilates the wonder. They are not in themselves less wonderful than any of those modifications which we are least accustomed to conceive. — Mind modifies body involuntarily.

“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 practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.”

The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803)
Contexto: 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 endeavoured 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 colours, 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 practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.

“Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.”

"Summary of Principles" 2.7
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
Variante: Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.

“If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.”

Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch.4
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.”

Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 2
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

“The pistol and dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue.”

Book IV, "Of Tyrannicide"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)