On October 14, 1644, William Penn was born in London into an established Anglican family. An independent thinker from an
early age, Penn became intrigued by the Quaker religion while a teenager. He studied briefly at Oxford, but was expelled at age
18 for rejecting Anglicanism. Formally joining the Society of Friends in Ireland at age 22, he alienated both Roman Catholic and Anglican
authorities, serving time in prison four separate times for his unorthodox religious beliefs. Espousing a combination of Puritan self-denial and
Quaker social reform, he wrote 42 books and pamphlets before age 30 (his 1669 book "No Cross, No Crown," written while he was imprisoned
in the Tower of London, is one of the world's finest examples of prison literature). Unable to find religious freedom in British Isles, Penn emigrated
to the American colonies in 1681, landing in New Jersey. Later that year, he received a vast province on the West bank of the Delaware River
(named Pennsylvania after his father, Admiral William Penn), as repayment for a debt that Charles II owed his father. Known to history
as "the founder of Pennsylvania," Penn's goal was to provide a refuge for Quakers and other religious groups seeking religious freedom. His
original 1682 constitution for Pennsylvania, called "The Frame of Government," wisely included an amending clause, the first in any
written constitution. In 1696 he drafted the first formal plan for a future union of the American colonies, a document that presaged the U. S.
Constitution. He authored two neat chiastic quotes:

"The truest end of life
is to know that life never ends."

"Governments rather depend upon men,
than men upon governments."

And one spectacular paradoxical one:

"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders
than from the arguments of its opposers."