Wendell Phillips - Government Quotes

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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.

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

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

Wendell Phillips
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.

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

Wendell Phillips
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.

Wendell Phillips
Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunderstorm, against the organized selfishness of human nature.

Wendell Phillips
Government is only a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing overmuch kills the self-help and energy of the governed.

Wendell Phillips
No class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics.

Wendell Phillips