William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforcewas an English politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire. In 1785, he became an Evangelical Christian, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth24 August 1759
christian perseverance art
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.
circumstance clear conduct duty golden others path regulate rule similar
Let everyone regulate his conduct . . . by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.
shortcuts holiness whole-life
There is no shortcut to holiness; it must be the business of our whole lives.
husband father passion
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?
country civilization degrees
What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a slave trade with Africa? With a country, vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization?
religious book want
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.
christian heart mind
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.
impossible realizing certain
We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible... So we will do them anyway.
faces doe oppression
A private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all.
men duty creatures
It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.
thinking loving-you heartless
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.
prayer secret-places neglect
Of all things, guard against neglecting God in the secret place of prayer.
mind wickedness determined
So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] 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.
ignorance bored missing
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