Wendell Phillips Quotes

[T]he Negro race, instead of being that object of pity or contempt which we usually consider it, is entitled, judged by the facts of history, to a place close by the side of the Saxon.

Revolutions never go backward.

Corruption does not so much rot the masses: it poisons Congress. Credit-Mobilier and money rings are not housed under thatched roofs: they flaunt at the Capitol. As usual in chemistry, the scum floats uppermost.

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.

To be as good as our fathers we must be better.

Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten.

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.

When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.

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

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

The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth — to tear a question open and riddle it with light.

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