Quotes by Wendell Phillips

• We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
• Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
• The heart is the best reflective thinker.
• The keener the want the lustier the growth.
• The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
• To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
• 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.
• 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.
• Power is every stealing from the many to the few.
• What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.
• What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better.
• What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.
• What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
• Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
• You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
• Responsibility educates.
• Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
• Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
• Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.
• Aristocracy is always cruel.
• Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
• Christianity is a battle not a dream.
• Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
• Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.
• Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
• Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
• If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.
• If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
• Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.
• 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.
• Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.
• The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
• One on God's side is a majority.
• Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
• Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.