Top 15 Wendell Phillips Quotes

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

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind.

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

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

External vigilance is the price of liberty.

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.

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

Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward.

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

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.

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.

He who stifles free discussion, secretly doubts whether what he professes to believe is really true.

Aristocracy is always cruel.