Top 122 Quotes & Sayings by Wendell Phillips

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

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

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.

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

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

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

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

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.

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

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.

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

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

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

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

Aristocracy is always cruel.

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

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

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

Power is every stealing from the many to the few.

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.

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

Responsibility educates.

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

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

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

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

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

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

One on God's side is a majority.

The keener the want the lustier the growth.

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

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

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

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

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents.

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice. A crazy sentimentalism, like that of Peter the Hermit, hurled half of Europe upon Asia, and changed the destinies of kingdoms.

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

My advice to a young man seeking deathless fame would be to espouse an unpopular cause and devote his life to it.

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

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.

Christianity is a battle, not a dream.

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.

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.

It is easy to be independent when all behind you agree with you, but the difficulty comes when nine hundred and ninety-nine of your friends think you are wrong.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either form human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

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

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

Statutes are mere milestone, telling how far yesterday's thought had traveled; and the talk of the sidewalk today is the law of the land. With us, law in nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

Hearts are stronger than swords.

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.

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

Do not take the yardstick of your ignorance to measure what the ancients knew, and call everything which you do not know lies. Do not call things untrue because they are marvelous, but give them a fair consideration.

Society,--the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world's university, at once a school and a theater, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy Church in fixing the moral sense of the eye.

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

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

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