110+ Wendell Phillips Quotes On Slavery, Advocacy And Abolitionism

Wendell Phillips was an American activist and abolitionist who dedicated his life to the fight for racial equality. He was a passionate public speaker who advocated for the abolition of slavery and the rights of African Americans. He was also a strong supporter of women's suffrage and labor rights. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Wendell Phillips on slavery, advocacy, abolitionism.

Top 10 Wendell Phillips Quotes

1. I think the first duty of society is justice.
2. What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.
3. Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.
4. What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.
5. Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
6. Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
7. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
8. The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
9. What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
10. The heart is the best reflective thinker.

Wendell Phillips Short Quotes

• The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
• Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.
• There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.
• The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.
• To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship
• Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
• Health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil.
• What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better.
• One on God's side is a majority.
• If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.

Wendell Phillips Quotes About Revolution

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

Revolutions never go backward. — Wendell Phillips

Revolutions are not made, they come. — Wendell Phillips

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

Political convulsions, like geological upheavings usher in new epochs of the world's progress. — 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

Wendell Phillips Quotes About Opinion

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

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

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

Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie! — 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 community which does not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack. — Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips Quotes About World

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

The slowest of us cannot but admit that the world moves. — Wendell Phillips

Right is the eternal sun; the world cannot delay its coming. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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. — Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

No free people can lose their liberties while they are jealous of liberty. But the liberties of the freest people are in danger when they set up symbols of liberty as fetishes, worshipping the symbol instead of the principle it represents. — Wendell Phillips

Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but liberty dates from it though Warren lay dead on the field. — Wendell Phillips

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

The work resembles a breech delivery-one which is expressed in rhythmic lurches, stabs of phrase and vocal ornamentation designed to express agitation rather than decorative grace. — 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

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

Christianity is a battle not a dream. — Wendell Phillips

Aristocracy is always cruel. — Wendell Phillips

We measure genius by quality, not by quantity. — Wendell Phillips

The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington. — Wendell Phillips

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

Responsibility educates. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

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

The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business. — Wendell Phillips

Baron Grimm declared that, as a rule, it was easy for little minds to attain splendid positions, because they devoted all their ability to the one object. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

The man who, for party, forsakes righteousness, goes down; and the armed battalions of God march over him. — Wendell Phillips

Republics exist only on tenure of being agitated. — 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

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

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

Power is every stealing from the many to the few. — Wendell Phillips

The heart is the best logician. — Wendell Phillips

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

Will the slave fight? If any man asks you, tell him No. But if anyone asks you will a Negro fight, tell him Yes! — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

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. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms. — Wendell Phillips

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

Eternal vigilance is the price of libertypower 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

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

It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles. — Wendell Phillips

Hearts are stronger than swords. — Wendell Phillips

Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty. — Wendell Phillips

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

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! — Wendell Phillips

The keener the want the lustier the growth. — Wendell Phillips

Do not take the yardstick of your ignorance to measure what the ancients knew, and call everything which you do not know lies. Do not call things untrue because they are marvelous, but give them a fair consideration. — Wendell Phillips

Never forgive at the ballot box! — Wendell Phillips

Though plunged in ills and exercised in care, Yet never let the noble mind despair. — Wendell Phillips

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

Brains and character rule the world. The most distinguished Frenchman of the last century said: Men succeed less by their talents than their character. There were scores of men a hundred years ago who had more intellect than Washington. He outlives and overrides them all by the influence of his character. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

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

Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment. — Wendell Phillips

The Puritan did not stop to think; he recognized God in his soul, and acted. — Wendell Phillips

Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man. — Wendell Phillips

Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave. — Wendell Phillips

Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate. — 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

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

War and Niagara thunder to a music of their own. — Wendell Phillips

To be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it. — Wendell Phillips

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

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

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

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust. — Wendell Phillips

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains. — Wendell Phillips

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

Life Lessons by Wendell Phillips

1. Wendell Phillips taught the importance of standing up for what is right and fighting for justice, no matter the personal cost.
2. He also showed that through hard work and dedication, one can make a difference in the world.
3. Finally, he demonstrated the power of using one's voice to speak out against injustice and oppression.