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

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If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.
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Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
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One on God's side is a majority.
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My advice to a young man seeking deathless fame would be to espouse an unpopular cause and devote his life to it.
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On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
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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.
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Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.
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The Puritan did not stop to think he recognized God in his soul, and acted.
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What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.
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Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
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It is easy to be independent when all behind you agree with you, but the difficulty comes when nine hundred and ninety-nine of your friends think you are wrong.
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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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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.
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Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.
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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.
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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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What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press has done for the mind and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
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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.
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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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How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.
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