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I think the first duty of society is justice.

Wendell Phillips

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Wendell Phillips
Age: 72 †
Born: 1811
Born: November 29
Died: 1884
Died: February 2
Jurist
Lawyer
Politician
Boston
Massachusetts
First
Think
Duty
Justice
Society
Inspirational
Firsts

More quotes by Wendell Phillips

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The Puritan did not stop to think he recognized God in his soul, and acted.
Wendell Phillips
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.
Wendell Phillips
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If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
Wendell Phillips
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Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.
Wendell Phillips
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Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
Wendell Phillips
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Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.
Wendell Phillips
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Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
Wendell Phillips
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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
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.
Wendell Phillips
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.
Wendell Phillips
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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
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Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.
Wendell Phillips
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One on God's side is a majority.
Wendell Phillips
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Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
Wendell Phillips
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The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness, goes down and the armed battalions of God march over him.
Wendell Phillips