William Penn

A wise man makes what he learns his own, the other shows he is but a copy or a collection at most.

If it be an evil to judge rashly or untruly any single man, how much a greater sin it is to condemn a whole people.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

If you protect a man from folly, you will soon have a nation of fools.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.

Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth.

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The more you know, the less you need.

It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.

My liver swells with bile difficult to repress.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

The nose of the bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go.