These Quaker quotes will inspire you. Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Quaker quotes, Quaker sayings, and Quaker proverbs.
Best Quaker Quotes
- “My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a quaker.” ~ Woody Allen
- “Now, Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, and try you, for the good of your souls. For this will deal plainly with you. It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make all manifest which lodges in you; the secret subtlety of the enemy of your souls, this eternal searcher and trier will make manifest. Therefore all to this come, and by this be searched, and judged, and led and guided. For to this you must stand or fall.” ~ Margaret Fell
- “In those days, slavery was not looked upon, even in Quaker Philadelphia, with the shudder and abhorrence one feels towards it now.” ~ John Sergeant Wise
- “I was a catastrophe at Science and Games, but the good thing about Quaker schools is that they encourage you in those subjects for which you show an aptitude.” ~ Richard Rodney Bennett
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“However, I spent most of my time in a Quaker school.” ~ Brian De Palma
- “However, ironically, I was baptized Presbyterian and went to a Quaker school for twelve years” ~ Brian De Palma
- “On landing at New York I caught the yellow fever by walking to the bank at Greenwich to get the money to which my father’s letter of credit entitled me. The kind man who commanded the ship that brought me from France, whose name was a common one, John Smith, took particular charge of me, removed me to Morristown, N. J., and placed me under the care of two Quaker ladies who kept a boarding – house. To their skillful and untiring ministrations, I may safely say I owe the prolongation of my life.” ~ John James Audubon
- “A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.” ~ William Penn
- “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~ Mother Teresa
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“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” ~ Anne Frank
- “True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it and excites their endeavors to mend it.” ~ William Penn
- “I was maybe 5 or 6, and my grandmother would begin sitting me in the Quaker meeting house. I asked my grandmother, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and she said, ‘Just wait, we’re going inside to greet the light.’ I liked that—this idea to go inside to find that light within, literally as well as figuratively.” ~ James Turrell , Quaker quotes about light
- “The secret of happiness is to count your blessings while others are adding up their troubles.” ~ William Penn
- “Oh Lord, may I be directed what to do and what to leave undone.” ~ Elizabeth Fry
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“To Turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives.” ~ John Woolman
- “Force may subdue, but love gains, and he that forgives first wins the laurel.” ~ William Penn
- “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do … let me do it now.” ~ William Penn
- “There is a quiet, open place in the depths of the mind, to which we can go many times in the day and lift up our soul in praise, thankfulness, and conscious unity. With practice, this God-ward turn of the mind becomes an almost constant direction, underlying all our other activities.” ~ Kenneth E. Boulding
- “Quakers are known for wanting to give back. Ban the bomb and the civil rights movement and the native American struggle for justice – those things were very, very front-burner in my childhood, as were the ideas of working for peace and if you have more than you need, then you share it with people who don’t.” ~ Bonnie Raitt
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“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.” ~ Anne Frank , Quaker quotes on death
- “Thus He whose tender mercies are over all His works hath placed a principle in the human mind, which incites to exercise goodness towards every living creature; and this being singly attended to, people become tender-hearted and sympathizing; but when frequently and totally rejected, the mind becomes shut up in a contrary disposition.” ~ John Woolman
- “My List of Virtues contain’d at first but twelve: But a Quaker Friend having kindly inform’d me that I was generally thought proud; that my Pride show’d itself frequently in Conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any Point, but was overbearing & rather insolent; of which he convinc’d me by mentioning several Instances; – I determined endeavouring to cure myself …, and I added Humility to my List, giving an extensive Meaning to the Word.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “The Quakers have a saying: “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.” To communicate to post-Christians, I must first listen to their stories for clues to how they view the world and how they view people like me.” ~ Philip Yancey
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“Whatever you do, you need courage.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Speak the truth.
Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,
and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power.
Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence.
All growth is not good.
The environment is a necessity, not a luxury.
There is such a thing as enough.” ~ Donella Meadows - “Whether in times of war or times of peace the Quaker is under peculiar obligation to assist and to forward movements and forces which make for peace in the world and which bind men together in ties of unity and fellowship.” ~ Rufus Jones
- “Words may help and silence may help, but the one thing needful is that the heart should turn to its Maker as the needle turns to the pole. For this we must be still.” ~ Caroline Emelia Stephen , Quaker quotes on silence
- “All writers who can claim to be called ‘living’ must be political in a sense. They must have what the Quakers call a concern to understand what is happening in the world, and must engage themselves, in their writing, to promote no comfortable lies, of the sort which people will pay well to be told rather than the truth.” ~ Storm Jameson
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“There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction, I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit.” ~ Herbert Hoover
- “The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.” ~ Richard J. Foster
- “In the context of Quaker worship, it is perfectly appropriate for any person in the congregation to speak a timely word from the Lord.” ~ Richard J. Foster
- “The best recreation is to do good.” ~ William Penn
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“As the Quakers say, “When you pray, move your feet.”” ~ Eric Butterworth
- “Friends come back from their worship with a new sense of ordination, but not the ordination of human hands. Something has happened in the stillness that makes the heart more tender, more sensitive, more shocked by evil, more dedicated to ideals of life, and more eager to push back the skirts of darkness and to widen the area of light and love.” ~ Rufus Jones
- “There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself” ~ James Nayler , Quaker quotes on hope
- “Out here you better have a gun, and a gun in the wagon ain’t good for nothin’. I believe what the old Quaker said, ‘Trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry.” ~ Louis L’Amour
- “O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.” ~ John Greenleaf Whittier
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“We pass through this world but once.” ~ Stephen Jay Gould
- “… my convictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the light within us, resting on truth as authority, rather than ‘taking authority for truth.'” ~ Lucretia Mott
- “There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever, this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression.” ~ John Woolman
- “For when I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up” ~ Robert Barclay
- “I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter, and it is some consolation that the desolation by these maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“The likeness we bear to Jesus is more essential than our notions of him.” ~ Lucretia Mott
- “If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval.” ~ Ezra Pound
- “All that you seek is already within you. In Hinduism, it is called the Atman, in Buddhism the pure Buddha-Mind. Christ said, ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you.’ Quakers call it the ‘still small voice within.’ This is the space of full awareness that is in harmony with all the universe, and thus is wisdom itself.” ~ Ram Dass
- “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
- “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
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“Quakers almost as good as colored. They call themselves friends and you can trust them every time.” ~ Harriet Tubman
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “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
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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
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “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
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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
- “Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the divine influences in our own hearts, is the cardinal doctrine of Quakerism.” ~ Caroline Emelia Stephen
- “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
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“I’m really a timid person – I was beaten up by Quakers” ~ Woody Allen
- “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
- “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
