“How are the faculties of man to be best developed and his happiness secured? The state of a king is not favorable to this, nor the state of the noble and rich men of the earth. All this is artificial life, the inventions of vanity and grasping ambition, by which we have spoiled the man of nature and of pure, simple, and undistorted impulses.”

English political philosopher and novelist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Godwin is best known for his radical political writings and early advocacy of individual liberty. His 1793 treatise *An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice* laid foundational ideas for anarchism and liberalism, emphasizing reason, natural rights, and the separation of church and state. He also penned the novel *Things as They Are* (1794), an early work of social critique, and collaborated with Mary Wollstonecraft on *Thoughts on the Education of Daughters* (1787).