William Ellery Channing Quotes
William Ellery Channing was an American Unitarian minister, theologian, and one of the most influential moral voices of the early American republic. From his pulpit at the Federal Street Church in Boston he articulated the central principles of nineteenth-century American Unitarianism in his celebrated Baltimore Sermon of 1819 and shaped the religious imagination of Emerson, Thoreau, and the wider Transcendentalist movement. The quotes below are attributed to William Ellery Channing, organized by topic.
Browse William Ellery Channing by topic
William Ellery Channing on Freedom
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Attributed to William Ellery Channing:
“Free thought is more sacred than even free speech.”
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Attributed to William Ellery Channing:
“There is no greater bondage than self-deceit.”
William Ellery Channing on God
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“God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.”
Unitarian Christianity"], an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819) -
“We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity . "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is one God, even the Father." With Jesus , we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.”
Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)
William Ellery Channing on Happiness
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“The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.”
Review of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1827) by Sir Walter Scott , in the Christian Examiner (September - October 1827)
William Ellery Channing on Justice
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Attributed to William Ellery Channing:
“Slavery is the moral disease of civilization.”
William Ellery Channing on Knowledge
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“Unitarian Christianity"], an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)”
God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue. -
“Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)”
We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason , or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers. -
“Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)”
We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity . "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is one God, even the Father." With Jesus , we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, t
William Ellery Channing on Life
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“I am a living member of the great Family of All Souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere.”
The Father's Love for Persons", in Selected Discourses and Essays from the Works of William Ellery Channing, DD (1895)
William Ellery Channing on Love
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“The Father's Love for Persons", in Selected Discourses and Essays from the Works of William Ellery Channing, DD (1895)”
I am a living member of the great Family of All Souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere.
William Ellery Channing on Mind
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“We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason , or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers.”
Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)
William Ellery Channing on Virtue
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Attributed to William Ellery Channing:
“The true sublimity of life is to be found in noble service.”
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Attributed to William Ellery Channing:
“Self-reverence is the foundation of all reverence.”
Things actually not said by William Ellery Channing
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as William Ellery Channing but are in fact from someone else. Did William Ellery Channing say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did William Ellery Channing say this? No.
“We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is overeager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth (1782–1842) , bishop of Chichester, in an address "Christ's Yoke Easy and Burden Light", published in The Sunday Library; or, The Protestant's Manual for the Sabbath-day (1831) by Thomas Frognall Dibdin; this seems to have become misattributed to Channing in A Dictionary