WENDELL PHILLIPS

Power is every stealing from the many to the few.

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

Aristocracy is always cruel.

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.

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

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

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.

Responsibility educates.

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.

Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.

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

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

Christianity is a battle not a dream.

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

The heart is the best reflective thinker.

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

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

Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

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.

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

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.

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

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

Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.