# Quote — William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

> Privilege is a regulation rendering a few men, and those only, by the accident of their birth, eligible to certain situations. It kills all liberal ambition in the rest of mankind, by opposing to it an apparently insurmountable bar. It diminishes it in the favored class itself, by showing them the principal qualification as indefeasibly theirs. Privilege entitles a favored few to engross to themselves gratifications which the system of the universe left at large to all her sons; it puts into the hands of those few the means of oppression against the rest of their species; it fill them witth vain-glory, and affords them every incitement to insolence and a lofty disregard to the feeling and interests of others.

- Author: [William Godwin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin.md)
- Book: [Enquiry Concerning Political Justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Godwin#Enquiry_Concerning_Political_Justice_(1793)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice/privilege-is-a-regulation

## More from this book

> The benefit of the governed is made to lie on one side and the benefit of the governors on the other.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice/the-benefit-of-the.md)

> The plebeian must expect to find himself neglected and despised in proportion as he is remiss in cultivation the objects of esteem; the lord will always be surrounded with sycophants and slaves. The lord therefore has no motive to industry and exertion; no stimulus to rouse him from the lethargic 'oblivious pool', out of which every human intellect originally arose.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice/the-plebeian-must.md)

> The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-godwin/enquiry-concerning-political-justice/the-evil-of-marriage.md)