Wendell Phillips

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

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.

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

[R]aces love to be judged in two ways—by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race.

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.

In God's world there are no majorities, no minorities; one, on God's side, is a majority.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

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

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

Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

Christianity is a battle, not a dream.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

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.

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.