Wendell Phillips Quotes

Satisfy the public mind that their liberties will be perpetual.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Our constitutional liberties shall not be sacrificed in our search for greater security, for that is what our enemies and all enemies of freedom and democracy hope to achieve.

People have become disillusioned with Parliament, and that threatens democracy.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

What makes me worry today is the alarming decline in the trust in democratic institutions - political parties, Parliaments, political leaders. Less and less people are going to the polls in most advanced democracies.

One of the main reasons I came back to Mexico is because I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found in the United States.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

If I do nothing else, I'm going to make this a safe state.

A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man.

If America wants to make the world safe for democracy, then she had better make democracy safe in America.

Guard with jealous attention to the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force.

Can the rights and freedoms of millions of virtuous people who believe in democracy be safeguarded if those who seek to destroy it abuse rights and freedoms to achieve their goals?

We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as people have become less vigilant of our liberties.

Without the confidence to know our democracy is functioning properly, we risk more disillusionment, more cynicism, and even more public apathy toward the entire system.

Individual liberty depends upon keeping government under control.

Eternal vigilence is the price of liberty.

You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping.

There are some moments you'd rather sleep through, pass from point A to point B without awareness of the time passing or the events that carry you from present to future. And it's mostly those moments in which it's smarter-safer- to stay awake.

We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Whatever you do....don't fall asleep.

The first step in saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose it unless fundamental political changes occur.

Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them.

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.

My brothers, the United States Bishops, have reminded us, all are called to be vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it.