Wendell Phillips Quotes - Page 4

There is a very broad theory that society gets the right to hang, as the individual gets the right to defend himself. Suppose she does; there are certain principles which limit this right. Society has got the murderer within four walls; he never can do any more harm. Has society any need to take that man's life to protect itself? If any society has only the right that the individual has, she has no right to inflict the penalty of death, because she can effectually restrain the individual from ever again committing his offence.

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.

The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.

A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? ... I maintain on the principles of '76 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. ... You can never make such a war popular. ... The North never will endorse such a war.

You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.

Freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print.

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

Revolutions never go backwards.

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.

Our agitation, you know, helps keep yours alive in the rank and file.

Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers.

Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.

Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.

The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.

Neither do I acknowledge the right of Plymouth to the whole rock. No, the rock underlies all America: it only crops out here.

Sin is not taken out of man, as Eve was out of Adam, by putting him to sleep.

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.

War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own.

Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.

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.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Revolution is the only thing, the only power, that ever worked out freedom for any people. The powers that have ruled long and learned to love ruling, will never give up that prerogative until they must, till they see the certainty of overthrow and destruction if they do not. To plant-to revolutionize-these are the twin stars that have ruled our pathway. What have we then to dread in the word Revolution-we, the children of rebels!

Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated.

God gives manhood but one clew to success,--utter and exact justice; that he guarantees shall be always expediency.