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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.
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
Think
Agree
Thinking
Hundred
Behinds
Behind
Friends
Ninety
Wrong
Nine
Easy
Difficulty
Comes
Independent
More quotes by Wendell Phillips
The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
Wendell Phillips
Political convulsions, like geological upheavings usher in new epochs of the world's progress.
Wendell Phillips
Never forgive at the ballot box!
Wendell Phillips
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.
Wendell Phillips
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.
Wendell Phillips
Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.
Wendell Phillips
Agitation prevents rebellion, keeps the peace, and secures progress. Every step she gains is gained forever. Muskets are the weapons of animals. Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
Wendell Phillips
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
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.
Wendell Phillips
Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another but get something.
Wendell Phillips
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.
Wendell Phillips
The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.
Wendell Phillips
Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate.
Wendell Phillips
My advice to a young man seeking deathless fame would be to espouse an unpopular cause and devote his life to it.
Wendell Phillips
The republic which sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never will have any.
Wendell Phillips
The press is the exclusive literature of the million to them it is literature, church, and college.
Wendell Phillips
Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.
Wendell Phillips
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.
Wendell Phillips
It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles.
Wendell Phillips
Our agitation, you know, helps keep yours alive in the rank and file.
Wendell Phillips
