George Ripley

“Man is not a creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.”

“Every man has a mission to perform, a post to maintain, a work to do, which is the result of his own individual organization, and which is essential to the harmony of the universal plan.”

“The great distinction of the Christian is not that he has been exempted from the lot of humanity, but that he has been enabled to look it in the face.”

“There is nothing too great for the human mind to grasp, nothing too sacred for it to approach.”

“We are not called to be hermits, but to be men, living in society, and striving to make it better.”

“The great problem of the age is to reconcile the claims of the individual with the claims of society.”

“The faith of a true man is not a thing of times and seasons, but a life.”

“Let us be men, not sycophants.”

“The truest life is that which is most in harmony with the divine order.”

“A true life is the highest art.”

“The task of the scholar is to show what is, not what ought to be.”

“Let us not be content to be echoes of the past, but let us be voices of the future.”

“The great object of all philosophy is to discover the unchangeable laws of the universe, and to learn our own true relations to them.”

“Our objects are to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual.”