William Penn (1644–1718) was an English Quaker. He established the colony of Pennsylvania and played a principal role in the history of New Jersey and Delaware. Penn also co-founded the city of Philadelphia.
The scion of a prosperous London family, Penn attended Oxford, studied law, and supervised the family’s estates before becoming a Quaker in the mid-1660s. For the rest of his life, Penn engaged in Quaker preaching and writing. He was jailed four times for publishing pamphlets about his religious beliefs.
In 1681, Penn convinced King Charles II to settle up a huge debt that the king owed Penn’s father by granting him the rough land in America that would become Pennsylvania. The following year, Penn leased and added the region now identified as Delaware.
Penn used his proprietary colony of Pennsylvania to settle Quakers and others seeking sanctuary from religious persecution. Pennsylvania remained a Penn family ownership until the American Revolutionary War (1775–83.)
In 1697, Penn proposed a federal union of the American colonies. He suggested creating a “congress” with two representatives from each colony.
In 1701, Penn granted the residents of Pennsylvania a “Charter of Privileges” that instituted a unicameral legislature and advanced colonial self-government. He also established Delaware as a separate colonial entity.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Penn
The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.
—William Penn
Topics: Ambition, Fortune
Patience and Diligence, like faith, remove mountains.
—William Penn
Topics: Perseverance, Patience
O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand.
—William Penn
Topics: Prayer, Prejudice
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.
—William Penn
Topics: Religion, God
He that does good for good’s sake, seeks neither praise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.
—William Penn
Topics: Results
If we would amend the world we should mend ourselves and teach our children to be not what we are but what they should be.
—William Penn
Topics: Posterity
It is most reasonable men should value that benefit, which is most durable. Now tongues shall cease, and prophecy fail, and faith shall be consummated in sight, and hope in enjoyment; but love remains.
—William Penn
He that lives to live forever, never fears dying.
—William Penn
Topics: Life, Dying, Death
Sense shines with a double lustre when it is set in humility. An able and yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.
—William Penn
Topics: Humility
We are very apt to be full of ourselves, instead of Him that made what we so much value, and but for whom we have no reason to value ourselves. For we have nothing that we can call our own, no, not ourselves; for we are all but tenants, and at will too, of the great Lord of ourselves, and of this great farm, the world that we live upon.
—William Penn
There is truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.
—William Penn
A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.
—William Penn
Love, therefore, labor; if thou shouldst not want it for food, thou mayest for physic. It is wholesome to the body and good for the mind; it prevents the fruit of idleness.
—William Penn
Topics: Labor
We are too careless of posterity, not considering that as they are so the next generation will be.
—William Penn
Topics: Posterity
Believe nothing against another, but on good authority; nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.
—William Penn
Topics: Slander
Avoid popularity; it has many snares, and no real benefit.
—William Penn
Topics: Popularity
Kings, in this chiefly, should imitate God; their mercy should be above all their works.
—William Penn
Topics: Kings, Queens, Royalty
There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves the free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.
—William Penn
Topics: Friendship, Friends
Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.
—William Penn
Topics: Confidence
True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. It is a great virtue: it covers folly, keeps secrets, avoids disputes, and prevents sin.
—William Penn
Topics: Silence, Seasons, Solitude, Sleep
In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.
—William Penn
The truest end of life is to know the life that never ends.
—William Penn
Topics: Life
Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.
—William Penn
Topics: Family, Fathers, Father, Marriage
It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.
—William Penn
Topics: Conversation
If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch, indeed, who will not give them to him.—Such a disposition is like lighting another man’s candle by one’s own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.
—William Penn
Next to God, thy parents.
—William Penn
Topics: Parents
To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.
—William Penn
Topics: Zeal
Be rather bountiful than expensive; do good with what thou hast, or it will do thee no good.
—William Penn
Topics: Goodness
Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.
—William Penn
Topics: Reading, Books
It is the difference betwixt lust and love, that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, lust wastes, by enjoyment; and the reason is, that one springs from a union of souls, and the other springs from a union of sense.
—William Penn
Topics: Enjoyment
Content not thyself that thou art virtuous in the general; for one link being wanting, the chain is defective. Perhaps thou art rather innocent than virtuous, and owest more to thy constitution than to thy religion.
—William Penn
Topics: Virtue
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
—William Penn
Topics: Democracy, Government
How vilely he has lost himself who becomes a slave to his servant, and exalts him to the dignity of his Maker! Gold is the God, the wife, the friend of the money-monger of the world.
—William Penn
Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided.
—William Penn
Topics: Promises
Method goes far to prevent trouble in business; for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those who have business depending, what to do and what to hope.
—William Penn
Topics: Business
Time is what we want most, but what alas! we use worst.
—William Penn
Topics: Waste, Time, Time Management
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
—William Penn
Topics: Sympathy, Death, Eternity
We are apt to love praise, but not deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than that.
—William Penn
Topics: Praise
Do what good thou canst unknown, and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.
—William Penn
Five things are requisite to a good officer—ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.
—William Penn
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