Wendell Phillips Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Inspirational, Life, Leadership

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.282

  71 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Phillips

  Mean, Government, Hands

  3 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Rights, Government, Political

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.341

  24 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Animal, Bravery, Accountability

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  Hands, Yesterday, People

  24 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Past, Heritage, Harvest

  17 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Liberty, Esprit De Corps, Stealing

  Wendell Phillips (1863). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.52

  25 Copy quote

• There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.

  Wendell Phillips

  Stronger, Prejudice, Humans

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.51

  13 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Country, New York, White

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.47

  7 Copy quote

• I think the first duty of society is justice.

  Wendell Phillips

  Inspirational, Justice, Firsts

  "Disunion". Book by Wendell Phillips, January 21, 1861.

  399 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Believe, Yesterday, Today

  6 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  War, Book, Reading

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.40

  74 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Phillips

  Past, Growth, Foundation

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.36

  17 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Cracks, Discussion, Ifs

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Phillips

  Independent, Thinking, Ninety Nine

  Wendell Phillips (1969). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters, Second Series”, Ayer Company Pub

  5 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Government, Today, Bigs

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Phillips

  Lying, Ignorance, Giving

  4 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Mean, Labour Movement, People

  Wendell Phillips (1891). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters: Second series”

  22 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Ideas, Gossip, Mind

  6 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Writing, Government, People

  Bulletin, Volume 8, Issues 11-18, p. 69,

  16 Copy quote

• Every government is always growing corrupt.

  Wendell Phillips

  Government, Growing

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.53

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Phillips

  Men, Two, Political

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wendell Phillips

  Freedom, Jealous, People

  14 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Truth, Blood, Forever

  Wendell Phillips (1859). “Fraternity Lecture of Wendell Phillips, Esq: Boston, Oct. 4, 1859. Also, Letter of Mr. Phillips to Judge Shaw and Prest. Walker”, p.6

  10 Copy quote

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

  Wendell Phillips

  Men, Two, Forget

  National Anti-Slavery Standard, 27 Apr. 1867

  15 Copy quote

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