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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
Duty
Justice
Society
Inspirational
Firsts
First
Think

More quotes by Wendell Phillips

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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
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Right is the eternal sun the world cannot delay its coming.
Wendell Phillips
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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
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To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
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
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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
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How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.
Wendell Phillips
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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
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The heart is the best logician.
Wendell Phillips
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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
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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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Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.
Wendell Phillips
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Aristocracy is always cruel.
Wendell Phillips
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God gives manhood but one clew to success,--utter and exact justice that he guarantees shall be always expediency.
Wendell Phillips
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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
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The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.
Wendell Phillips
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The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.
Wendell Phillips
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War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.
Wendell Phillips
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Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
Wendell Phillips
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The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
Wendell Phillips