Wendell Phillips quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Wendell Phillips on Wise Famous Quotes.

Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field.

The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness, goes down; and the armed battalions of God march over him.

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

No class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.

Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate.

Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.

To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.

Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.

The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.

To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.

The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people

Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.

I will utter what I believe today, if it should contradict all I said yesterday.

Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.

Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half.

The keener the want the lustier the growth.

When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.

Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.

Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.

Every government is always growing corrupt.

You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.

Health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.

The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.

Hearts are stronger than swords.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

Will the slave fight? If any man asks you, tell him No. But if anyone asks you will a Negro fight, tell him Yes!

If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.

The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man.

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.

Our agitation, you know, helps keep yours alive in the rank and file.

Though plunged in ills and exercised in care,
Yet never let the noble mind despair.

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.

The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.

The slowest of us cannot but admit that the world moves.

On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.

Revolutions are not made, they come.

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.

Immoral laws are doubtless void, and should not be obeyed.

The heart is the best logician.

Power is every stealing from the many to the few.

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.

Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!

If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

God gives manhood but one clew to success,
utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated ... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.

War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.

Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.

Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

Right is the eternal sun; the world cannot delay its coming.

Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.

Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.

Revolutions never go backwards.

The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.

Political convulsions, like geological upheavings usher in new epochs of the world's progress.

Never forgive at the ballot box!

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.

The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.

Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.

What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind.

One on God's side is a majority.

It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world

Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinion, who dares not give free scope to his opponent.

It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles.

The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.