William Wilberforce Quotes

       William Wilberforce
       1759-1833
      
       William Wilberforce was a British politician, philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780 and became the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire and a close friend of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.
      
       In 1785 he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian, resulting in changes in his lifestyle and in his interest in reform. In 1787 he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave trade activists, including Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Lord Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition; and he soon became one of the leading English abolitionists, heading the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade until the eventual passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.

The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.     Topics: Anxiety You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.     Topics: Apathy 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?     Topics: Christianity 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.     Topics: Compassion So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the Trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.     Topics: Compassion, Justice God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.     Topics: Compassion, Service Africa, your sufferings have been the theme that has arrested and engaged my heart. Your sufferings no tongue can express, no language impart.     Topics: Compassion A trade founded in iniquity, and carried on as this was, must be abolished, let the policy be what it might, let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest till I had effected its abolition.     Topics: Compassion, Achievement And, sir, when we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?     Topics: Eternity, Conscience, Justice 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.     Topics: Finances, Greed, Doctrine Can you tell a plain man the road to heaven? Certainly, turn at once to the right, then go straight forward.     Topics: Heaven They know indeed that they are mortal, but they do not feel it.     Topics: Holiness