Quaker Quotes - Page 3

• My activism did not spring from my being gay, or, for that matter, from my being black. Rather, it is rooted fundamentally in my Quaker upbringing and the values that were instilled in me by my grandparents who reared me.

  Bayard Rustin

  Spring, Gay, Grandparent

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• I give myself this advice: Do not fear truth, let it be ever so contrary to inclination and feeling. Never give up the search after it; and let me take courage, and try from the bottom of my heart to do that which I believe truth dictates, if it lead me to be a Quaker or not

  Elizabeth Fry

  Giving Up, Believe, Heart

  Elizabeth Gurney Fry (1847). “Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry: With Extracts from Her Letters and Journal”, p.86

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• I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith, forgiveness, absolution, extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic, no matter how lapsed they are.

  Kate Atkinson

  Thinking, Catholic, Would Be

  "Emotionally weird? Moi?". Interview with Kim Bunce, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2000.

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• I wasn't really aware they were a religious organization for quite some time. But my grandparents were very devout and ran a Quaker meetinghouse and were missionaries at one point.

  Charlie Brooker

  Religious, Organization, Grandparent

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Our Quakers love us. We're big with the Quakers. It's all about cleanliness.

  Kyan Douglas

  Cleanliness, Bigs

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.

  Ned Rorem

  Military, Gay, Men

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• The Quaker upbringing was not strict, but it was frugal. Extremely frugal. One was always encouraged to give away ones worldly goods.

  Kathy Baker

  Giving, Strict, Goods

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• I lost my eyes In east wind skies Here's where I've cried Where I've tried Where God and the Tendaberry rise Where Quakers and revolutionaries Join for life

  Laura Nyro

  Eye, Wind, Sky

  Song: New York Tendaberry, Album: New York Tendaberry

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• From the steady opposition which faithful Friends in early times made to wrong things then approved, they were hated and persecuted by men living in the spirit of this world, and suffering with firmness, they were made a blessing to the Church, and the work prospered.

  John Woolman

  Men, Blessing, Faithful

  John Woolman (1837). “A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours, and Christian Experiences, of that Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman”, p.72

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• I wanted to help people. I was raised by Quaker hippies... True happiness comes from helping others, that's what was pounded in my head from day one... So that began my teaching journey.

  Greg Jackson

  Hippie, Teaching, Helping Others

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• There has never been a time in my life when I felt that I could take a gun and shoot down a fellow-being. In this respect I am a Quaker.

  Dwight L. Moody

  Gun, Pacifism, Felt

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• Part of the reason I had such a drive to be an activist, and support other activists, is because I was raised Quaker and my parents kept us very much informed and involved as kids in civil rights and the conservation movement.

  Bonnie Raitt

  Kids, Rights, Support

  "Origin Interview: Diggin' Deep with Bonnie Raitt, Legend, Activist, Musician". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. April 27, 2016.

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• Looking back at his career, Mr. Rustin, a Quaker, once wrote: ‘The principal factors which influenced my life are 1) nonviolent tactics; 2) constitutional means; 3) democratic procedures; 4) respect for human personality; 5) a belief that all people are one.’

  Bayard Rustin

  Mean, Careers, People

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• This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Blessed, America

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.171, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.

  Bonnie Raitt

  Religious, Political, Calling

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• The moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.

  Bayard Rustin

  Men, Looks, Firsts

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• In returning I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker , on that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the Slave-trade.

  John Wesley

  Book, Different, Honest

  John Wesley, John Emory (1758). “Journals”, p.366

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• That which the people called Quakers lay down as a main fundamental in religion is this- That God, through Christ, hath placed a principle in every man, to inform him of his duty, and to enable him to do it; and that those that live up to this principle are the people of God, and those that live in disobedience to it, are not God's people, whatever name they may bear, or profession they may make of religion. This is their ancient, first, and standing testimony: with this they began, and this they bore, and do bear to the world.

  William Penn

  Men, Names, People

  William Penn (1857). “Primitive Christianity revived in the faith and practice of the people called Quakers: Written in testimony to the present dispensation of God through them to the world that prejudices may be removed, the simple informed, the well-inclined encouraged, and the truth, and its innocent friends rightly represented”

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• For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

  John F. Kennedy

  Religious, Virginia, Years

  Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, delivered 12 September 1960 at the Rice Hotel in Houston, TX

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• If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Hate, Believe, Men

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1909). “Interviews”

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• I am a Quaker. And as everyone knows, Quakers, for 300 years, have, on conscientious ground, been against participating in war. I was sentenced to three years in federal prison because I could not religiously and conscientiously accept killing my fellow man.

  Bayard Rustin

  War, Men, Years

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• God should be most where man is least: So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag nor form of creed To clothe the nakedness of need,- Where farmer folk in silence meet,- I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Pride, Men, Oneness

  John Greenleaf Whittier (1869). “Among the Hills, and Other Poems”, p.73

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• Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That's something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

  Terry Pratchett

  Christian, Parent, Church

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• As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life.

  Leon Trotsky

  Vegetarian, Human Life, Sacredness

  Leon Trotsky (2014). “The Defence of Terrorism (Routledge Revivals): Terrorism and Communism”, p.60, Routledge

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• I thought a lot about Nixon's personal history and the changes in America during his lifetime and tried to craft stories, which I thought reflected some of his personal history but also the backdrop of a changing America. Nixon grew up in a strict Quaker family. The idea of the American Dream, of hard work and not much fun, was ingrained in Nixon as a child, but curiously so was a love of music. Nixon himself was a pretty good piano player. So it's the contradictions that interest me, as I think we all have them.

  A.M. Homes

  Dream, Children, Fun

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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