Top 50 William Wilberforce Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

— William Wilberforce

Featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Morality Quotes, Accountability Quotes, Justice Quotes

2. “A private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all.”

— William Wilberforce

3. “Let it not be said that I was silent when they needed me.”

— William Wilberforce

4. “There is no shortcut to holiness; it must be the business of our whole lives.”

— William Wilberforce

5. “If there is no passionate love for Christ at the center of everything, we will only jingle and jangle our way across the world, merely making a noise as we go.”

— William Wilberforce

6. “If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.”

— William Wilberforce

7. “Of all things, guard against neglecting God in the secret place of prayer.”

— William Wilberforce

8. “To live our lives and miss that great purpose we were designed to accomplish is truly a sin. It is inconceivable that we could be bored in a world with so much wrong to tackle, so much ignorance to reach and so much misery we could alleviate.”

— William Wilberforce

9. “If you love someone who is ruining his or her life because of faulty thinking, and you don’t do anything about it because you are afraid of what others might think, it would seem that rather than being loving, you are in fact being heartless.”

— William Wilberforce

10. “No matter how loud you shout, you will not drown out the voice of the people!”

— William Wilberforce

11. “May God enable me to have a single eye and a simple heart, desiring to please God, to do good to my fellow creatures, and testify my gratitude to my adorable Redeemer.”

— William Wilberforce

12. “Life as we know it, with all its ups and downs, will soon be over. We all will give an accounting to God of how we have lived.”

— William Wilberforce

13. “Measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men.”

— William Wilberforce

14. “I am disturbed when I see the majority of so-called Christians having such little understanding of the real nature of the faith they profess. Faith is a subject of such importance that we should not ignore it because of the distractions or the hectic pace of our lives.”

— William Wilberforce

15. “My walk is a public one. My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.”

— William Wilberforce

16. “No one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or inquiry.”

— William Wilberforce

17. “God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.”

— William Wilberforce

18. “Our motto must continue to be perseverance. And ultimately I trust the Almighty will crown our efforts with success.”

— William Wilberforce

19. “There are four things that we ought to do with the Word of God – admit it as the Word of God, commit it to our hearts and minds, submit to it, and transmit it to the world.”

— William Wilberforce

20. “Lovely flowers are the smiles of god’s goodness.”

— William Wilberforce

21. “You can choose to look the other way but never again can you say that you never knew.”

— William Wilberforce

22. “It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.”

— William Wilberforce

23. “As much pains were taken to make me idle as were ever taken to make me studious.”

— William Wilberforce

24. “How can you measure the value of the good news of Christ? It is spoken of in the Bible as light in the darkness, freedom from slavery and life from death. Look at how much the Early Church valued the message. They received it with great joy and overflowing gratitude.”

— William Wilberforce

25. “What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians.”

— William Wilberforce

26. “It makes no sense to take the name of Christian and not cling to Christ. Jesus is not some magic charm to wear like a piece of jewelry we think will give us good luck. He is the Lord. His name is to be written on our hearts in such a powerful way that it creates within us a profound experience of His peace and a heart that is filled with His praise.”

— William Wilberforce

27. “The first years in Parliament I did nothing – nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.”

— William Wilberforce

28. “Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven? Certainly, turn at once to the right, and then go straight forward.”

— William Wilberforce

29. “I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.”

— William Wilberforce

30. “Having seen all this you can choose to look the other way, but you can never say again, ‘I did not know.”

— William Wilberforce

31. “Can one serve God and one’s nation in parliament?”

— William Wilberforce

32. “Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean.”

— William Wilberforce

33. “The distemper of which, as a community, we are sick, should be considered rather as a moral than a political malady.”

— William Wilberforce

34. “I would suggest that faith is everyone’s business. The advance or decline of faith is so intimately connected to the welfare of a society that it should be of particular interest to a politician.”

— William Wilberforce

35. “No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?”

— William Wilberforce

36. “This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours!”

— William Wilberforce

37. “When blessed with wealth, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity and be modest, retiring from ostentation, and not be the slaves of fashion.”

— William Wilberforce

38. “Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature; and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.”

— William Wilberforce

39. “Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size.”

— William Wilberforce

40. “Read the Bible, read the Bible! Let no religious book take its place. Through all my perplexities and distresses, I seldom read any other book, and I as rarely felt the want of any other.”

— William Wilberforce

41. “The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.”

— William Wilberforce

42. “Some might say that one’s faith is a private matter and should not be spoken of so publicly. They might assert this in public, but what do they really think in their hearts? The fact is, those who say such things usually don’t even have a concern for faith in the privacy of their interior lives.”

— William Wilberforce

43. “It is the distinguishing glory of Christianity not to rest satisfied with superficial appearances, but to rectify the motives, and purify the heart.”

— William Wilberforce

44. “Men of authority and influence may promote good morals. Let them in their several stations encourage virtue. Let them favor and take part in any plans which may be formed for the advancement of morality.”

— William Wilberforce

45. “Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.”

— William Wilberforce

46. “Is it not the great end of religion, and, in particular, the glory of Christianity, to extinguish the malignant passions; to curb the violence, to control the appetites, and to smooth the asperities of man; to make us compassionate and kind, and forgiving one to another; to make us good husbands, good fathers, good friends; and to render us active and useful in the discharge of the relative social and civil duties?”

— William Wilberforce

47. “The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint.”

— William Wilberforce

48. “Let true Christians then, with becoming earnestness, strive in all things to recommend their profession, and to put to silence the vain scoffs of ignorant objectors.”

— William Wilberforce

49. “Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not with-hold; they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise.”

— William Wilberforce

50. “I continually find it necessary to guard against that natural love of wealth and grandeur which prompts us always, when we come to apply our general doctrine to our own case, to claim an exception.”

— William Wilberforce