Wendell Phillips

Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.

Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.

If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something.

Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.

On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.

Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.

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

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

Revolutions are not made, they come.

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.

To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.