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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.
Wendell Phillips
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Wendell Phillips
Age: 72 †
Born: 1811
Born: November 29
Died: 1884
Died: February 2
Jurist
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Politician
Boston
Massachusetts
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More quotes by Wendell Phillips
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
Wendell Phillips
What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.
Wendell Phillips
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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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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Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
Wendell Phillips
The press is the exclusive literature of the million to them it is literature, church, and college.
Wendell Phillips
The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.
Wendell Phillips
Revolutions are not made, they come.
Wendell Phillips
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
Wendell Phillips
Immoral laws are doubtless void, and should not be obeyed.
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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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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Our agitation, you know, helps keep yours alive in the rank and file.
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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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What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.
Wendell Phillips
Insurrection of thought always precedes the insurrection of arms.
Wendell Phillips
The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
Wendell Phillips
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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Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!
Wendell Phillips
Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
Wendell Phillips