Wendell Phillips Quotes
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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.
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I think the first duty of society is justice.
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Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
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Every government is always growing corrupt.
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You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
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What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press has done for the mind; and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
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The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.
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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.
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Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
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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.
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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.
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Right is the eternal sun; the world cannot delay its coming.
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The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.
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Christianity is a battle, not a dream.
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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.
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Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.
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Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
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Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field.
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The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.
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Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress
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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.
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The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.
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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.
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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.
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We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
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Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
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Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
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The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.
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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.
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Health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil.
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