Wendell Phillips

“Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection—they have many friends and few enemies.”

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

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

“Revolutions are not made; they come.”

“To be as good as our fathers we must be better than our fathers.”

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

“One on God's side is a majority.”

“The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.”

“Revolutions never go backward.”

“We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.”

“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.”

“The labor of a human being is not a commodity.”

“Peace, if possible, but justice at any rate.”

“Opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.”

“The man who is not sometimes a fanatic is never convinced.”

“The cause of the people is the hope of the world.”

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

“The labor movement is my only hope for democracy.”

“Christianity is a battle, not a dream.”