Top 100 Wendell Phillips Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

53. “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

54. “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

55. “It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world.”

— Wendell Phillips

56. “Politicians are like the bones of a horse’s foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.”

— Wendell Phillips

57. “The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.”

— Wendell Phillips

58. “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.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

62. “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

63. “The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.”

— Wendell Phillips

64. “The keener the want the lustier the growth.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

66. “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

67. “The heart is the best logician.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

69. “Statutes are mere milestone, telling how far yesterday’s thought had traveled; and the talk of the sidewalk today is the law of the land. With us, law in nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.”

— Wendell Phillips

70. “Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.”

— Wendell Phillips

71. “Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.”

— Wendell Phillips

72. “Never forgive at the ballot box!”

— Wendell Phillips

73. “What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.”

— Wendell Phillips

74. “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

75. “Every government is always growing corrupt.”

— Wendell Phillips

76. “The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted.”

— Wendell Phillips

77. “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

78. “Political convulsions, like geological upheavings usher in new epochs of the world’s progress.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

80. “There is nothing stronger than human prejudice. A crazy sentimentalism, like that of Peter the Hermit, hurled half of Europe upon Asia, and changed the destinies of kingdoms.”

— Wendell Phillips

81. “We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.”

— Wendell Phillips

82. “Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines intellect. The keener the want the lustier the growth.”

— Wendell Phillips

83. “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

84. “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

85. “Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.”

— Wendell Phillips

86. “The slowest of us cannot but admit that the world moves.”

— Wendell Phillips

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

— Wendell Phillips

88. “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

89. “Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.”

— Wendell Phillips

90. “To be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it.”

— Wendell Phillips

91. “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

92. “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

93. “Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!”

— Wendell Phillips

94. “Hearts are stronger than swords.”

— Wendell Phillips

95. “War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.”

— Wendell Phillips

96. “Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.”

— Wendell Phillips

97. “The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness, goes down; and the armed battalions of God march over him.”

— Wendell Phillips

98. “What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.”

— Wendell Phillips

99. “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

100. “The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.”

— Wendell Phillips