Top 100 Wendell Phillips Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

3. “The first duty of society is justice.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

5. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

— Wendell Phillips

6. “Every man meets his Waterloo at last.”

— Wendell Phillips

7. “If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.”

— Wendell Phillips

8. “We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.”

— Wendell Phillips

9. “Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

11. “The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.”

— Wendell Phillips

12. “What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.”

— Wendell Phillips

13. “Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.”

— Wendell Phillips

14. “The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people.”

— Wendell Phillips

15. “Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.”

— Wendell Phillips

16. “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.”

— Wendell Phillips

17. “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

18. “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

19. “Revolutions never go backwards.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

21. “One on God’s side is a majority.”

— Wendell Phillips

22. “The Puritan’s idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.”

— Wendell Phillips

23. “The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.”

— Wendell Phillips

24. “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.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

26. “Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.”

— Wendell Phillips

27. “There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.”

— Wendell Phillips

28. “It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles.”

— Wendell Phillips

29. “Revolutions are not made, they come.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

31. “The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

34. “If there is anything in the universe that can’t stand discussion, let it crack.”

— Wendell Phillips

35. “Christianity is a battle, not a dream.”

— Wendell Phillips

36. “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

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

— Wendell Phillips

38. “Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.”

— Wendell Phillips

39. “Aristocracy is always cruel.”

— Wendell Phillips

40. “Right is the eternal sun; the world cannot delay its coming.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

42. “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

43. “Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

46. “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

47. “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

48. “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

49. “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

50. “To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.”

— Wendell Phillips