Top 100 William Ralph Inge Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.”

— William Ralph Inge

Featured in: Quotes About Humanity, Quotes About Veganism

2. “The church that is married to the spirit of this age, becomes a widow in the next.”

— William Ralph Inge

3. “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

— William Ralph Inge

4. “The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.”

— William Ralph Inge

5. “Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.”

— William Ralph Inge

6. “The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.”

— William Ralph Inge

7. “Don’t break the silence unless you can improve on it.”

— William Ralph Inge

8. “Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.”

— William Ralph Inge

9. “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”

— William Ralph Inge

10. “Experience is a good teacher, but her fees are very high.”

— William Ralph Inge

11. “The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.”

— William Ralph Inge

12. “The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.”

— William Ralph Inge

13. “We must cut our coat according to our cloth, and adapt ourselves to changing circumstances.”

— William Ralph Inge

14. “There are no rewards or punishments – only consequences.”

— William Ralph Inge

15. “Joy is the triumph of life; it is the sign that we are living our true life as spiritual beings.”

— William Ralph Inge

16. “The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive.”

— William Ralph Inge

17. “Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.”

— William Ralph Inge

18. “The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.”

— William Ralph Inge

19. “Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.”

— William Ralph Inge

20. “The whole of creation, with all of its laws, is a revelation of God.”

— William Ralph Inge

21. “Nature takes away any faculty that is not used.”

— William Ralph Inge

22. “The game of life is worth playing, but the struggle is the prize.”

— William Ralph Inge

23. “Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.”

— William Ralph Inge

24. “Faith is an act of self-consecration, in which the will, the intellect, and the affections all have their place.”

— William Ralph Inge

25. “In imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats them well, and governs them for their good, they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence.”

— William Ralph Inge

26. “If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.”

— William Ralph Inge

27. “The happy people are those who are producing something...”

— William Ralph Inge

28. “Originality, I fear, is too often only undetected and frequently unconscious plagiarism.”

— William Ralph Inge

29. “A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it.”

— William Ralph Inge

30. “Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful or to discover something that is true.”

— William Ralph Inge

31. “The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.”

— William Ralph Inge

32. “There is no law of progress. Our future is in our own hands, to make or to mar. It will be an uphill fight to the end, and would we have it otherwise? Let no one suppose that evolution will ever exempt us from struggles. ‘You forget,’ said the Devil, with a chuckle, ’that I have been evolving too.”

— William Ralph Inge

33. “The Devil deserves zero tolerance.”

— William Ralph Inge

34. “Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.”

— William Ralph Inge

35. “It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God.”

— William Ralph Inge

36. “A monarch frequently represents his subjects better that an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.”

— William Ralph Inge

37. “The world belongs to those who think and act with it, who keep a finger on its pulse.”

— William Ralph Inge

38. “Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.”

— William Ralph Inge

39. “The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.”

— William Ralph Inge

40. “Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.”

— William Ralph Inge

41. “Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.”

— William Ralph Inge

42. “The object of studying philosophy is to know one’s own mind, not other peoples.”

— William Ralph Inge

43. “The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.”

— William Ralph Inge

44. “My dear, we live in an age of transition.”

— William Ralph Inge

45. “A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.”

— William Ralph Inge

46. “Civilization is being poisoned by its own waste products.”

— William Ralph Inge

47. “A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.”

— William Ralph Inge

48. “There are two kinds of fools: one says, “This is old, therefore it is good”; the other says, “This is new, therefore it is better.”

— William Ralph Inge

49. “Religion is caught, not taught.”

— William Ralph Inge

50. “We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.”

— William Ralph Inge