Frases de William Godwin

William Godwin fue un político y escritor británico, considerado uno de los más importantes precursores del pensamiento anarquista. Es también famoso por las mujeres con las cuales estuvo vinculado durante su vida: se casó con la escritora feminista Mary Wollstonecraft en 1797 y junto a ella tuvo una hija, también llamada Mary, que ha pasado a la posteridad como la autora de la novela gótica Frankenstein. Wikipedia  

✵ 3. marzo 1756 – 7. abril 1836
William Godwin Foto
William Godwin: 42   frases 1   Me gusta

Frases célebres de William Godwin

“En verdad, no hay tiempo más perdido que el que se gasta leyendo compendios.”

Fuente: Citado en Monlau, Pedro Felipe. Libro de los libros: ó, Ramillete de máximas, pensamientos y dichos sentenciosos agudos ó memorables. 3ª Edición. Editorial La Illustracíon, 1847. p. 16.

“El gobierno pretendía suprimir la injusticia, pero su efecto ha sido encarnarla y perpetuarla.”

Resumen de Principios 2.7.
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners. Vol. 1.
Original: «Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it».

“El gobierno pretendía suprimir la injusticia, pero ofreció nuevas ocasiones y tentaciones para la comisión de la misma.”

Resumen de Principios 2.4.
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners. Vol. 1.
Original: «Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it».

“Tuvo un efecto desafortunado sobre el entendimiento y el temperamento humanos, que un hombre se viera obligado en su más grave investigación de un argumento, a considerar, no lo que es verdad, sino lo que es conveniente.”

Original: «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».
Fuente: Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, the Early English Poet: Including Memoirs of His Near Friend and Kinsman, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster: with Sketches of the Manners, Opinions, Arts and Literature of England in the Fourteenth Century, Volumen 1. Autor William Godwin Editor T. Davison, 1803. p. 370.

William Godwin: Frases en inglés

“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)

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