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1 " To help pass the time, William set to work writing. He called the first tract he wrote in Newgate Prison The Great Case for Liberty of Conscience. In the tract he argued that a person could be free only if he or she had choices to make, and when those choices were made for a person by someone over him or her, everyone loses out. People must be allowed to test the truth of their beliefs for themselves and see if that was what they really believed or merely what they had been made to believe. "
― Janet Benge , William Penn: Liberty and Justice for All
2 " While William Penn, in the end, spent only a short period of time in Pennsylvania, in the time he was there he left an indelible mark upon the place. And when a group of men gathered together in his city of Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a constitution for the fledgling United States of America, the ideals of William Penn from nearly a hundred years before about liberty, justice, fairness, and tolerance guided much of their thinking and discussion. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson, one of the men present at that gathering, called William Penn “the greatest lawgiver the world has produced. "
3 " As he rode along William thought about all that he had learned from Moses Amyraut. He saw how pointless it was accumulating so many possessions. A single spark could take them all away. No, he told himself, there were more important things in life than social position and an abundance of possessions for him to strive for. "
4 " True religion is not a matter of outward observances. Rather it takes place within the heart. It is not rooted in past events in a far-off land but in the true Inner Light that shone then and continues to shine today. Men must follow this Inner Light until it illuminates their heart and they experience a closeness of God there. No other man, no priest or clergyman, can mediate this. Each man, in the quiet of his heart, must come to his own reckoning with God. For the Scriptures tell us that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks at a man’s heart. "
