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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.
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
Giving
Ignorance
Yardsticks
Things
Lies
Ancients
Knew
Untrue
Call
Marvelous
Lying
Consideration
Give
Measure
Everything
Fairs
Take
Fair
Yardstick
More quotes by Wendell Phillips
Will the slave fight? If any man asks you, tell him No. But if anyone asks you will a Negro fight, tell him Yes!
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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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Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!
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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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Every government is always growing corrupt.
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Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
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Revolutions are not made, they come.
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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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The community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.
Wendell Phillips
Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects to succeed in future from the same means which have secured it in times past.
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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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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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Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
Wendell Phillips
Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man.
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Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
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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.
Wendell Phillips
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
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.
Wendell Phillips
