Best 95 quotes of Wendell Phillips on MyQuotes

Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? ... I maintain on the principles of '76 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. ... You can never make such a war popular. ... The North never will endorse such a war.

Baron Grimm declared that, as a rule, it was easy for little minds to attain splendid positions, because they devoted all their ability to the one object.

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.

Brains and character rule the world. The most distinguished Frenchman of the last century said: Men succeed less by their talents than their character. There were scores of men a hundred years ago who had more intellect than Washington. He outlives and overrides them all by the influence of his character.

Christianity is a battle, not a dream.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Every government is always growing corrupt.

Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

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

Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.

Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects to succeed in future from the same means which have secured it in times past.

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

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

Government arrogates to itself that it alone forms men. Everybody knows that government never began anything. It is the whole world that thinks and governs.

Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.

Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed.

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

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.

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

Hearts are stronger than swords.

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

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

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

Insurrection of thought always precedes the insurrection of arms.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never forgive at the ballot box!

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.

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.

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

One on God's side is a majority.

Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something.

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

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

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