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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotations by Wendell Phillips (American Abolitionist)

Inspirational Quotations by Wendell Phillips (American Abolitionist)

Wendell Phillips (1811–84) was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer. Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 29, 1811, to Sarah Walley and John Phillips, a successful lawyer, politician, and philanthropist. Phillips was schooled at Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard University in 1831. He went on to attend Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1833. In 1834, Phillips was admitted to the Massachusetts state bar, and in the same year, he opened a law practice in Boston. His professor of oratory was Edward T. Channing, a critic of flowery speakers such as Daniel Webster. Channing emphasized the value of plain speaking, a philosophy which Phillips took to heart.

More: Wikipedia (via CC-BY-SA license) • READ: Works by Wendell Phillips

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Journalism

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
Topics: Government

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Religion

Political convulsions, like geological upheavings, usher in new epochs of the world’s progress.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Revolution

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction, Religion

Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Truth

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The hand entrusted with power becomes the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
—Wendell Phillips

Revolutions are not made; they come.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Revolution

God gives manhood but one clue to success, utter and exact justice; that, he guarantees, shall be always expediency.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Justice

If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
—Wendell Phillips

What is defeat? — Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Failures, Mistakes, Failure, Defeat

Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts, and crutches. The need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. — All overmuch governing kills the self-help and energy of the governed.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Government

Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines intellect. The keener the want, the lustier the growth.
—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
Topics: Revolution

What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind; the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Books, Reading

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
Topics: Talent

When Infinite Wisdom established the rule of right and honesty, He saw to it that justice should be always the highest expediency.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Justice

Aristocracy is always cruel.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Aristocracy

The heart is the best logician.
—Wendell Phillips

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.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Politics

Statutes are mere milestones, telling how far yesterday’s thought had travelled; and the talk of the sidewalk today is the law of the land. — With us, law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Opinion, Justice

Write on my gravestone: “Infidel, Traitor.”–infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Revolution

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Education

On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Words

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
—Wendell Phillips

Christianity is a battle not a dream.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Battle, Christianity

One on God’s side is a majority.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: God

To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
—Wendell Phillips

The keener the want the lustier the growth.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Desires

Every step of progress which the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to state.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Progress

As the Greek said, many men know how to flatter; few know to praise.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Praise

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
—Wendell Phillips

Revolutions never go backwards.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Progress, Revolution

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Decisions, Life

I will utter what I believe today, if it should contradict all I said yesterday.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Opinion

We read history through our prejudices.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: History

Responsibility educates.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Responsibility

Society — the only field where the sexes have ever met on terms of equality, the arena where character is formed and studied, the cradle and the realm of public opinion, the crucible of ideas, the world’s university, at once a school and a theatre, the spur and the crown of ambition, the tribunal which unmasks pretension and stamps real merit, the power that gives government leave to be, and outruns the lazy church in fixing the moral sense.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Society

Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Praise

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Bravery

The heart is the best reflective thinker.
—Wendell Phillips

With us, law is nothing unless close, behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes was waste paper, lacking all executive force.
—Wendell Phillips

Agitation is the method that plants the school by the side of the ballot box.
—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 old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes. — First, men were in chains, that went back to an iron hand — then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron, and ruling by force. — The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Civilization

Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects success in the future by the same means which secured it in the past.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Experience

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
—Wendell Phillips
Topics: Religion

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