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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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Wendell Phillips
Age: 72 †
Born: 1811
Born: November 29
Died: 1884
Died: February 2
Jurist
Lawyer
Politician
Boston
Massachusetts
Two
Men
Prudently
Creep
Nameless
Creeps
Immortality
Graves
Forget

More quotes by 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.
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Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.
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Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!
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Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field.
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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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Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.
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To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
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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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Aristocracy is always cruel.
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Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.
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Do not take the yardstick of your ignorance to measure what the ancients knew, and call everything which you do not know lies. Do not call things untrue because they are marvelous, but give them a fair consideration.
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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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Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
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The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people
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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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Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.
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Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
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Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.
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Physical bravery is an animal instinct moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.
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Though plunged in ills and exercised in care, Yet never let the noble mind despair.
Wendell Phillips