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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
Today
Behind
Stands
Nothing
Land
Yesterday
Opinion
Warm
Public
Telling
Law
Mere
Statutes
Talk
Close
Milestone
Living
Behinds
Sidewalk
Thought
Unless
Traveled
More quotes by Wendell Phillips
Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
Wendell Phillips
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.
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
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.
Wendell Phillips
It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles.
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
Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinion, who dares not give free scope to his opponent.
Wendell Phillips
The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.
Wendell Phillips
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
Wendell Phillips
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.
Wendell Phillips
Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
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 hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people
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
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
How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.
Wendell Phillips
Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.
Wendell Phillips
Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.
Wendell Phillips
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
