The Enquirer, part 2, essay 8, page 285

The poets and fine writers of antiquity still appear to us excellent; while the visions of Plato, and the arrangements of Aristotle, have no longer a place but in the brains of a few dreaming and obscure pedants.

Most people today think highly of Plato and Aristotle. A notable exception is Karl Popper.

Interested in Popper?

Rafe Champion has a lot of information on his website The Rathouse. And he's added a new sitemap so it's easier to find.

http://www.the-rathouse.com/fullindex.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Burke

The economist Adam Smith remarked that Burke was "the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us".[76]

The cite says: E. G. West, Adam Smith (New York: Arlington House, 1969), p. 201.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010505221015/medusa.twinoaks.org/members/(I)An-ok/bakunin.html

Quotes are all from Bakunin. The page of quotes was collected by someone who likes Bakunin.

If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. - God and the State, 1871

Godwin didn't hate God.

Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, and socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality. - Federalism, Socialism and Anti-Theologism, 1867

Godwin didn't criticize freedom itself.

There can be no equality between schoolmaster and pupils. - The Bear of Berne and the Bear of St.Petersberg, 1870

Godwin said there can and should be such equality.

No one should be entrusted with power, inasmuch as anyone invested with authority must, through the force of an immutable social law, become an oppressor and exploiter of society. - Statism and Anarchy, 1873

Godwin didn't see the people in power as exploiters. He saw them as victims, too, of bad ideas.

No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will ever save the world. I cleave to no system, I am a true seeker. - correspondence, n.d.

Godwin didn't trash theories.

Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life. The urge to destroy is also a creative urge. - Reaction in Germany, 1842

Godwin didn't trust destruction and annihilation.

One must distinguish between the prejudices of the people and those of the privileged classes. The prejudices of the masses are based only on their ignorance and run counter to their own interests, where the prejudices of the bourgeoisie are based precisely on their interests. Which of the two is incurable? The bourgeoisie, without any doubt. - The Politics of the International, 1869

Godwin said the prejudices of the privileged classes were *not* in their interest. That means they would voluntarily change things if they understood more.

Everywhere religious or philosophical idealism(the one being simply the more or less free interpretation of the other) serves today as the banner of bloody and brutal material force, of shameless material exploitation. - The Knouto-Germanic Empire, 1871

Godwin never writes stuff that sounds like that.

I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity, and the happiness of men can develop and grow; not that purely formal liberty, conceded, measured, and regulated by the State, an eternal lie. No, I mean the only liberty truly worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the powers - material, intellectual, and moral - that are latent faculties of each; liberty that recognizes no other restrictions than those outlined for us by the laws of our own individual nature, so that properly speaking, there are no restrictions...

I mean that liberty of each individual which, far from halting as at a boundary before the liberty of others, finds there its confirmation and its extension to infinity; the illimitable liberty of each through the liberty of all, liberty by solidarity, liberty in equality; liberty triumphing over brute force and the principle of authority which was never anything but the intellectualized expression of that force; liberty which, after having overthrown all heavenly and earthly idols, will found and organize a new world, that of human solidarity, on the ruins of all Churches and all States. - The Paris Commune and the Notion of the State

I bolded the three parts of the quote I'm commenting on, and replied to them in order.

Godwin thought we should live according to objective morality, not follow our individual nature.

Godwin thought our liberty did need to halt at the boundary of the liberty of others.

Godwin didn't want to create any ruins, i.e. didn't want to destroy things.

The Enquirer, part 2, essay 2, page 168:

There is no alternative, but that men must either have their portion of labour assigned them by the society at large, and the produce collected into a common stick; or that each man must be left to exert the portion of industry, and cultivate the habits of economy, to which his mind shall prompt him.

The first of these modes of existence deserves our fixed disapprobation[1].

[1] Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. II, octavo edition

Godwin is saying that communal sharing of labor and of wealth is bad, and that people working and using resources according to their own personal judgment is good.

Let's look up his cite:

http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/godwin/pj8.htm

It has already appeared(1*) that one of the most essential of the rights of man is my right to the forbearance of others; not merely that they shall refrain from every thing that may, by direct consequence, affect my life, or the possession of my powers, but that they shall refrain from usurping upon my understanding, and shall leave me a certain equal sphere for the exercise of my private judgement. This is necessary because it is possible for them to be wrong, as well as for me to be so, because the exercise of the understanding is essential to the improvement of man, and because the pain and interruption I suffer are as real, when they infringe, in my conception only, upon what is of importance to me, as if the infringement had been, in the utmost degree, palpable. Hence it follows that no man may, in ordinary cases, make use of my apartment, furniture or garments, or of my food, in the way of barter or loan, without having first obtained my consent.

If, by positive institution, the property of every man were equalized today, without a contemporary change in men's dispositions and sentiments, it would become unequal tomorrow. The same evils would spring up with a rapid growth; and we should have gained nothing, by a project which, while it violated every man's habits, and many men's inclinations, would render thousands miserable.

We have already shown,(3*) and shall have occasion to show more at large,(4*) how pernicious the consequences would be if government were to take the whole permanently into their hands, and dispense to every man his daily bread.

The most destructive of all excesses is that where one man shall dictate to another, or undertake to compel him to do, or refrain from doing, anything ... otherwise than with his own consent.

It is therefore right that property ... should be defended, if need be, by means of coercion.

Persuasion, and not force, is the legitimate instrument for influencing the human mind

These quotes show Godwin's commitment to property rights, and against the use of force. If the best use of a piece of property is not with its owner, then he ought to voluntarily donate it to the better usage. If he disagrees, all you may do is offer him your reasons for your belief to try to persuade him. Consent is paramount.

Inductivists want to have a premise "the future is like the past". Because if it isn't, then they can't infer from past observations to the future.

Let me state the obvious: sometimes the future is like the past, and sometimes it isn't. The past had a living William Godwin but the future won't. The past had wheat and the future will too. So is the future like the past? It is in some respects, and not in others. It depends.

Insisting that the future is like the past, full stop, is ridiculous.

If the future is sometimes like the past, how are we to know when it will be and when it won't be?

Induction offers no answer to that.

I can offer an answer: some of our explanations apply to the future, and some don't.

Why is it important that induction is false, and explanation-based approaches are better? Because the methods of finding good explanations are different than the methods of induction. So inductivists try to pursue knowledge in the wrong way, and it works badly.

In other words, ideas have consequences for one's life. Deeply false ideas about how to think have especially bad consequences.

Godwin said "Poverty is an enormous evil". Does that mean he'd be a socialist sympathizer and a critic of the USA, today?

No.

Here is what Godwin meant by 'poverty':

The Enquirer, part 2, essay 1, page 162:

By poverty I understand the state of a man possessing no permanent property, in a country where wealth and luxury have already gained a secure establishment.

Why did Godwin dislike poverty? Here's two of the reasons he gives (p 164):

Every one can see however, that inordinate labour produces untimely decripitude.

the poor are condemned to a want of that leisure which is necessary for the improvement of the mind. They are the predestinated victims of ignorance and prejudice.

To Godwin, poverty meant you work hard all day, every day, so much that you don't ever have time to read books and think, even if you really want to, and you tire out your body so much that you live substantially fewer years, and for all this work you do not gain enough reward to accumlate any savings.

There is nothing like that in the USA today. The homeless don't work. Minimum wage workers have lots of time to read and think if they make it a priority (over watching TV, hobbies, socializing, etc), don't work all day, don't work every day, and can easily accumulate a savings if they are frugal.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/ipod-touch-not-lies-sets-kids-pants-on-fire-parents-sue.ars

At that time, he stood up and noticed that his pants were, in fact, on fire. "Plaintiff A.V. immediately ran to the bathroom and took off his burning pants with the assistance of a friend,"

...

[afterwards he] went directly to the doctor, where he was declared to have received second degree burns to his leg.

So his pants were on fire, and before removing them he went to the bathroom for some privacy. As a result he received second degree burns. That's how much people care about modesty: they will suffer severe injuries in modesty's name.

(Note: It's unclear if he could have escaped the burns by taking his pants off immediately. If not -- if his leg was already burning -- then no doubt he could have received lesser burns by removing the pants immediately.)