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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
Government
Anything
Governs
Whole
Began
Never
Forms
Men
Thinks
Thinking
Everybody
World
Alone
Form

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Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.
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Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
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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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Insurrection of thought always precedes the insurrection of arms.
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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.
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Every government is always growing corrupt.
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Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
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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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Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines intellect. The keener the want the lustier the growth.
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The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
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Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
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Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.
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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.
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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.
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Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
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The keener the want the lustier the growth.
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Many men know how to flatter, few men know how to praise.
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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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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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It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world
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