Wendell Phillips Quotes - Page 2

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.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

My advice to a young man seeking deathless fame would be to espouse an unpopular cause and devote his life to it.

Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!

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.

Christianity is a battle, not a dream.

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.

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 theater, 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 of the eye.

The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.

One on God's side is a majority.

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.

Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

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.

Never forgive at the ballot box!

Immoral laws are doubtless void, and should not be obeyed.

Many men know how to flatter, few men know how to praise.

It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world

The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people

Hearts are stronger than swords.

Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress

Health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil.

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity.