Wendell Phillips Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

Aristocracy is always cruel. — Wendell Phillips

The paleontological evidence before us today clearly demonstrates ordered progressive change with the successive development of new faunal and floral assemblages through the changing epochs of our earth's history. There should be no real conflict between science, which is the search for truth, and Christ's teachings, which I hold to be truth itself. It is only when scientists remove God from creation that the Christian is faced with an irreconcilable situation. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

The keener the want the lustier the growth. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

Revolutions are not made, they come. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

Hearts are stronger than swords. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains. — Wendell Phillips

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity. — Wendell Phillips

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them. — Wendell Phillips

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

Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise. — Wendell Phillips

Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave. — Wendell Phillips

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

Every man meets his Waterloo at last. — Wendell Phillips

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

There is a very broad theory that society gets the right to hang, as the individual gets the right to defend himself. Suppose she does; there are certain principles which limit this right. Society has got the murderer within four walls; he never can do any more harm. Has society any need to take that man's life to protect itself? If any society has only the right that the individual has, she has no right to inflict the penalty of death, because she can effectually restrain the individual from ever again committing his offence. — Wendell Phillips

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

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. — Wendell Phillips

Every government is always growing corrupt. — Wendell Phillips

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

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. — Wendell Phillips

Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels! — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms. — Wendell Phillips

Never forgive at the ballot box! — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common sense. He feels, with Copernicus, that as God waited long for an interpreter, so he can wait for his followers. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

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

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

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

The republic which sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never will have any. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

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

One on God's side is a majority. — Wendell Phillips

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

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers. — Wendell Phillips

Christianity is a battle not a dream. — Wendell Phillips

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

The heart is the best logician. — Wendell Phillips

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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. — Wendell Phillips

War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

The work resembles a breech delivery-one which is expressed in rhythmic lurches, stabs of phrase and vocal ornamentation designed to express agitation rather than decorative grace. — Wendell Phillips

Revolutions never go backwards. — Wendell Phillips

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

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. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

The heart is the best reflective thinker. — Wendell Phillips

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

Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated. — Wendell Phillips