The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.
— Wendell Phillips
What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion.
Agitation is the atmosphere of the brains.
The keener the want the lustier the growth.
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
The heart is the best reflective thinker.
If you want to be an orator, first get your great cause.
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.
Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.
Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.
To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places.
You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency.
Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.
Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.
Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
Power is every stealing from the many to the few.
Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
Many know how to flatter, few know how to praise.
One on God's side is a majority.
What gunpowder did for war the printing press has done for the mind.
Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.
The best education in the world is that got by struggling to get a living.
Today it is not big business that we have to fear. It is big government.
Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake.
If there is anything in the universe that can't stand discussion, let it crack.
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
Responsibility educates.
Christianity is a battle not a dream.
To be as good as our fathers we must be better, imitation is not discipleship.
What is defeat? Nothing but education. Nothing but the first step to something better.
Aristocracy is always cruel.
Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.
Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
