William Barrett may refer to:
- William Barrett (antiquarian) (1733–1789), English surgeon and antiquary
- William Barrett (consul) (died 1584), English consul at Aleppo
- William Barrett (philosopher) (1913–1992), American philosopher and critic
- William Barrett (priest) (1880–1956), British-Australian Anglican Dean of Brisbane
- William A. Barrett (1896–1976), American politician and a member of the Democratic Party
- William E. Barrett (born 1929), former US Representative from Nebraska
- William Edmund Barrett (1900–1986), writer
- William Emerson Barrett (1858–1906), Representative from Massachusetts
- William Fletcher Barrett (1844–1925), English physicist
- William Hale Barrett (1866–1941), American federal judge
- William N. Barrett (1855–1916), American politician
- William Daniel Barrett (1878–1953), New Zealand tribal leader, land court agent and trust board secretary
Famous quotes containing the word barrett:
“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everything ... and that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”
—William Barrett (b. 1913)