“The spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.”

“That none be busy-bodies in other’s matters, but each one to bear another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ; that they be sincere and without offence, and that all things which are honest be done without murmurings and disputings; that they may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, amongst whom they may shine as lights in the world.”

“Early Friends called themselves many things. One of the labels that they gave to themselves was ‘Publishers of Truth’. They meant that in the most basic form of making truth public. It could mean being what was called in the 17th century a ‘public Friends,’ one who was led to preach, to public ministry, to declare the word of the lord anywhere they could find an audience.”

“From the earliest days, Quakers were known for speaking truth as they experienced it inwardly in their meetings for worship. They didn’t make a distinction between belief and action. Truth was almost more of a verb than a noun; it was something which you ‘did’ as you experienced it.”

“I believe there is something in the mind, or in the heart, that shows its approbation when we do right. I give myself this advice: Do not fear truth, let it be so contrary to inclination and feeling. Never give up the search after it: and let me take courage, and try from the bottom of my heart to do that which I believe truth dictates, if it leads me to be a Quaker or not.”

“Oh come! be not wedded to your own ways, nor prejudiced against what God hath taught others; but let things be fairly scanned, that all things may be proved, and that which is good held fast; for truth will not lose ground by being tried; but darkness is afraid of the light, because it has a secret sense that it cannot stand before it.”

“In my own life, I was steeped in the religious understanding of my Quaker forebears on both sides of the family, and in a closely-bordered childhood on a dairy farm in an Indiana Quaker community. But it wasn’t until a spiritual epiphany in 1964 that led to my becoming a conscientious objector that I made Quaker spirituality experiential rather than ‘inherited.'”

“I’d rather be jolly St. Francis, singing his canticle to the sun, than a dour, old sober-sides Quaker whose diet would appear to have been spiritual persimmons.”

“To sit down in silence could at the least pledge me to nothing; it might open to me (as it did that morning) the very gate of heaven. And, since that day, now more than 17 years ago, Friends’ meetings have indeed been to me the greatest of outward helps to a fuller entrance into the spirit from which they have sprung.”

“If one has had the experience of an inward, spiritual transformation, no outward forms are necessary. If one has not, no outward forms will suffice.”

“Truth for authority, not authority for truth.”

“There is that near you which will guide you. O! Hearken unto it, and be sure ye keep to it.”

“And when all my hopes in them, and in all people was gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, Then, O! Then I heard a voice, which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’: and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy.”

“If you neither hear nor obey the Lord nor his servants, yet will he send more of his servants among you, so that your end shall be frustrated, that think to restrain them, you call cursed Quakers, from coming among you by any thing you can do to them; yea verily, he has a seed here among you, for whom we have suffered all this while, and yet suffer; whom the Lord of the harvest will send forth more laborers to gather (out of the mouths of the devourers of all sorts) into his fold, where he will lead them into fresh pastures, even the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”