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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
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Wendell Phillips
Age: 72 †
Born: 1811
Born: November 29
Died: 1884
Died: February 2
Jurist
Lawyer
Politician
Boston
Massachusetts
Thinking
Everybody
World
Alone
Form
Government
Anything
Governs
Whole
Began
Never
Forms
Men
Thinks
More quotes by Wendell Phillips
What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.
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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.
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Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress
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We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
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Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
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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.
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How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.
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The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
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Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
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Aristocracy is always cruel.
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Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
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Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
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I will utter what I believe today, if it should contradict all I said yesterday.
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Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.
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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.
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Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate.
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