Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
Wendell PhillipsRead
Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Debt can destabilize governments and corrupt societies.
Wendell Phillips highlights that accumulating debt poses a severe threat to democratic governments, as it can erode their foundational principles, lead to corruption, and ultimately weaken the bond between the government and its citizens. In this context, debt is seen as not just a financial issue, but a moral and political one that can undermine the very fabric of a republic.
Themes
DebtGovernmentCorruptionRepublicFinancialPolitical
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about financial responsibility, one could use this quote to emphasize the dangers of national debt.
More from Wendell Phillips
All quotes βSeldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
Wendell PhillipsRead
If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
Wendell PhillipsRead
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.
Wendell PhillipsRead
Write on my gravestone: 'Infidel, Traitor.', infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.
Wendell PhillipsRead
On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
Wendell PhillipsRead
Similar quotes
There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.
Christopher HitchensRead
Good is something you do, not something you talk about. Some medals are pinned to your soul, not to your jacket.
Gino BartaliRead
He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave.
AristotleRead
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
Oscar WildeRead
When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.
Jean CocteauRead
Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
Graham GreeneRead