Wendell Phillips Quotes

All law is a dead letter without public opinion behind it.

You cannot strengthen the law by violating the law.

In any society that is governed by the rule of law, some form of morality is always imposed. It's inescapable.

There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

The law is bigger than money - but only if the law works hard enough.

Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.

I don't feel particularly comfortable about actors using whatever power they may have to push their beliefs, unless they're extremely well informed.

Public business … must always be done by somebody…. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not.

We have the obligation to defy public opinion in the public interest.

It is the duty of a citizen not only to observe the law but to let it be known that he is opposed to its violation.

A man ain't got not right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.

Anyone who takes it upon himself ... to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

We all must follow the rule of law, not the rule of aldermen.

Laws that do not embody public opinion can never be enforced.

Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.

Our politics, our public life and thought rise not to the level of our opportunity.

No law is stronger than is the public sentiment where it is to be enforced.

Even legal documents are of little value if there is not behind them the force of public opinion and public approval.

...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.

A competent knowledge of the laws of that society in which we live, is the proper accomplishment of every gentleman and scholar

How many thousands pronounce boldly on the affairs of the public whom God nor men never qualified for such judgment?

Freedom requires civil responsibility.

Every American has the duty to obey the law and the right to expect that the law will be enforced.