Wendell Phillips Quotes

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

The system under which we live is owned and operated by people who do not deserve to run the world.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

It is bad to have a servant, but worse to have a master.

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose; while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose, especially their lives.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

A city in which the nobles obtain their desire, is nothing else but a company of masters and slaves ordered to the satisfaction of the avarice and dishonest wishes of the ruling class.

The preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station…

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us.

O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years, Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield The scourge that drove the laborer to the field, And look with stony eye on human tears, Thy cruel reign is o'er;

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice done to three fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all the blacks.... Nine of every ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even State affairs as the negroes had.

The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative. the history of the capsulize era is characterized by the degradation of my people: despoiled of their lands, their true culture destroyed...denied equal protection of the law, and deprived their rightful place in the respect of their fellows.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion

The writers of the Declaration of Independence were mistaken when they affirmed that all men are created equal. My slaves did not choose their lot in life, neither did we ask for ours; we are created for these places.

I think that children are acutely sensitive to injustice because they live in a world that is absolutely filled with injustice. They have very, very little power, and they are extremely aware of power relations.

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.