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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.

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
Public
Telling
Law
Mere
Statutes
Talk
Close
Milestone
Living
Behinds
Sidewalk
Thought
Unless
Traveled
Today
Behind
Stands
Nothing
Land
Yesterday
Opinion
Warm

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You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
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Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
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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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The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
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Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half.
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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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The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
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Revolutions never go backwards.
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Immoral laws are doubtless void, and should not be obeyed.
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To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
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Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
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Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
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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.
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Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.
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Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate.
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Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.
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Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.
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The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
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Hearts are stronger than swords.
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Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
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