James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Wendell Phillips
Defeat is nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better.
Education is the only interest worthy the deep, controlling anxiety of the thoughtful man.
Every step of progress which the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold and from stake to stake.
Give to the masses nothing to do, and they will topple down thrones and cut throats; give them the government here, and they will make pulpits useless, and colleges an impertinence.
Government arrogates to itself that it alone forms men…. Everybody knows that Government never began anything. It is the whole world that thinks and governs.
Government began in tyranny and force, in the feudalism of the soldier and the bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way like a thunderstorm against the organised selfishness of human nature.
Government is a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing over much kills the self-help and energy of the governed.
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities.
Health lies in labour, and there is no royal road to it but through toil.
Hearts are stronger than swords.
Justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organised selfishness of human nature. God has given manhood but one clue to success—utter and exact justice.
Many men know how to flatter; few men know how to praise.
One on God’s side is a majority.
Our self-made men are the glory of our institutions.
Power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
Revolutions are not made, they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.
Revolutions never go backward.
The heart is the best logician.
To be as good as our fathers, we must be better. Imitation is not discipleship. When some one sent a cracked plate to China to have a set made, every piece in the new set had a crack in it.
Truth is one, for ever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the dispositions of the spectator.
What gunpowder did for war, the printing-press has done for the mind; and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of special education, but every reading man is his judge.
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.