Wendell Phillips Quotes
-
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.
-
Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.
-
Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
-
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.
-
The best use of laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.
-
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
-
Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.
-
The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth - to tear a question open and riddle it with light.
-
Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.
-
The heart is the best reflective thinker.
-
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.
-
If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
-
I think the first duty of society is justice.
-
To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
-
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
-
What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.
-
Races love to be judged in two ways-by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race.
-
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
-
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
-
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
-
Responsibility educates.
-
The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
-
Corruption does not so much rot the masses: it poisons Congress. Credit-Mobilier and money rings are not housed under thatched roofs: they flaunt at the Capitol. As usual in chemistry, the scum floats uppermost.
-
Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward.