149 Quotes by Wendell Phillips

Experience is a safe light to walk by, and he is not a rash man who expects to succeed in future from the same means which have secured it in times past.

There is a very broad theory that society gets the right to hang, as the individual gets the right to defend himself. Suppose she does; there are certain principles which limit this right. Society has got the murderer within four walls; he never can do any more harm. Has society any need to take that man's life to protect itself? If any society has only the right that the individual has, she has no right to inflict the penalty of death, because she can effectually restrain the individual from ever again committing his offence.

Revolutions are not made, they come.

One on God's side is a majority.

Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated.... There is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.

Our agitation, you know, helps keep yours alive in the rank and file.

Politicians are like the bones of a horse's foreshoulder-not a straight one in it.

Politics is but the common pulse-beat, of which revolution is the fever-spasm.

It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world