William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing

16 quotes

Known primarily as an American Unitarian clergyman, William Ellery Channing also happens to be one of the most quotable figures in our collection. Celebrated for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day, William Ellery Channing brought that same intensity to the written and spoken word. 24 of William Ellery Channing's sharpest quotes live here, spanning themes of Knowledge, Society, Happiness, Success, and Smile. Readers often gravitate to this one: "Life has a higher end, than to be amused."

“The world is governed by opinion.”

— William Ellery Channing

Politics

All Quotes by William Ellery Channing

“How easy to be amiable in the midst of happiness and success.”

— William Ellery Channing

Happiness

“The home is the chief school of human virtues.”

— William Ellery Channing

Home

“No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.”

— William Ellery Channing

Knowledge

“Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.”

— William Ellery Channing

Knowledge

“The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.”

— William Ellery Channing

Best

“Nothing which has entered into our experience is ever lost.”

— William Ellery Channing

Experience

“God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.”

— William Ellery Channing

Intelligence

“The world is governed by opinion.”

— William Ellery Channing

Politics

“It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the mind's dignity.”

— William Ellery Channing

Knowledge

“Life has a higher end, than to be amused.”

— William Ellery Channing

Life

“The great hope of society is in individual character.”

— William Ellery Channing

Hope

“Faith is love taking the form of aspiration.”

— William Ellery Channing

Faith

“The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.”

— William Ellery Channing

Communication

“We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.”

— William Ellery Channing

Smile

“The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.”

— William Ellery Channing

Government

“Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.”

— William Ellery Channing

Great