A Quote by Wendell Phillips

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.

Wendell Phillips

Quote Topics

Agitation Awake Becomes Corps Day Dead Democrat Depravity Despot Each Each Day Either Enemy Entrusted Esprit De Corps Eternal Eternal Vigilance Ever Few Form Hand Human Liberty Living Many Material Must Necessary Office Only Oversight People Popular Power Price Principle Prosperity Rotten Sap Stealing Today Vigilance Yesterday

Quote Author

Wendell Phillips
American - Activist
November 29, 1811 - February 2, 1884

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

Wendell Phillips

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

Wendell Phillips

Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.

John Dewey

The distinguishing part of our constitution is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate, is the peculiar duty and proper trust of a member of the house of commons. But the liberty, the only liberty I mean, is a liberty connected with order, and that not only exists with order and virtue, but cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.

Edmund Burke

But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing.

Andrew Jackson

Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.

Ronald Reagan

The price of liberty is something more than eternal vigilance. There must also be eternal advance. We can save the rights we have inherited from our fathers only by winning new ones to bequeath our children.

Henry Demarest Lloyd

Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.

Madame de Stael

Of all earthly blessings, I place Liberty in the first rank, and of course, consider the obligation to defend and preserve it, as the most sacred of all our civil and social duties... It is not in the power of any single, or few individuals to preserve liberty. It can only be effected by the people themselves; by their intelligence, virtue, courage, and patriotism.

John C. Calhoun

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.

Ludwig von Mises

Libertarian presidential candidate André Marrou's idea is that "government power is opposed to individual liberty." Must we still debate such sophomoric notions?... Besides, liberty, although very important, is not the only value.

George Will

Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.

Clarence Darrow

Our Founders were not naive simpletons. They understood that human freedom is a fragile thing, that 'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.'

Tom Tancredo

The genius of Republican liberty, seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people; but, that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointments; and, that, even during this short period, the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands.