“Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstone of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might have lain forever undiscovered.”
Source: The American Crisis
“There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.”
Source: The Political Writings of Thomas Paine ...: Prospects on the Rubicon. Rights of man, part I. Rights of man, part II. Letter to the authors of the Republican. Letter to the Abbe Sieyes. Address to the addressers. Letters to Lord Onslow. Dissertation on the first principles of government. Speech delivered in the French National convention. Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas. The decline and fall of the English system of finance. Letter to the people of France. Reasons for preserving the life of Louis
“A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.”
Source: Selected Writings of Thomas Paine
“The protection of a man's person is more sacred than the protection of his property.”
Source: Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings
“It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive, that although laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet that they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non repealing passes for consent.”
Source: Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America
“Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.”
Source: The Political Writings of Thomas Paine ...: Prospects on the Rubicon. Rights of man, part I. Rights of man, part II. Letter to the authors of the Republican. Letter to the Abbe Sieyes. Address to the addressers. Letters to Lord Onslow. Dissertation on the first principles of government. Speech delivered in the French National convention. Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas. The decline and fall of the English system of finance. Letter to the people of France. Reasons for preserving the life of Louis
“The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.”
Source: Paine: Political Writings
“These proceedings may at first seem strange and difficult, but like all other steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become familiar and agreeable: and until an independence is declared, the Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.”
Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…
“Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.”
“There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.”
Source: The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar
“The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.”
Source: The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
“The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?”
Source: The Rights of Man: With a Brief Historical Preface
“When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order.”
Source: The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
“The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.”
Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…
“The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax”
“How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.”
Source: Selected Writings of Thomas Paine
“There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of paper money schemes.”
Source: Brief sketch of the life of Thomas Paine. Common sense. Epistle to Quakers. The crisis. Public good. Letter to the Abbe Raynal. Dissertations on government, the affairs of the bank, and paper money. Miscellaneous
“One of the evils of paper money is that it turns the whole country into stock jobbers. The precariousness of its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect. Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon accident, caprice, and party; and as it is the interest of some to depreciate and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country.”
Source: Selected Writings of Thomas Paine
“If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.”
Source: Selected Writings of Thomas Paine
“Money, when considered as the fruit of many years' industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow's dowry and children's portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.”
Source: Brief sketch of the life of Thomas Paine. Common sense. Epistle to Quakers. The crisis. Public good. Letter to the Abbe Raynal. Dissertations on government, the affairs of the bank, and paper money. Miscellaneous
“Man must go back to nature for information.”
Source: The Rights of Man
“It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies.”
Source: Collected Writings
“Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.”
Source: The Works of Thomas Paine: His Epoch-making Writings in Religion, Government, Human Rights and International Relations
“But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not entitled to credit, as being the word of God.”
Source: The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology
“That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.”
Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…
“In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.”
“All Of Us Might Wish At Times That We Lived In A More Tranquil World....(yet) Our Times Are Challenging And Filled With Opportunity.”
“Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.”
Source: THE AMERICAN CRISIS – Revolutionary Work Which Inspired the American People to Fight for Their Independence: Including
“Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.”
Source: The Thomas Paine Reader
“It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.”
“As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.”
“There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the 'end of time,' or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.”
“Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“I had come to realize the importance of the Nation, and of shared, communal, social responsibility, to be held as equally important as individual concerns. The elderly, the widowed, newly married couples, the poor, the unemployed, disbanded soldiers and children, who would be required to attend school, must be provided for from state funds. And all this support is not the nature of charity, but of a right.”
“A government of our own is our natural right”
Source: Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings
“Kill the king but spare the man.”
Source: The age of reason
“In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are made war upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake, it is their duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other light, and from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable.”
Source: The American Crisis
“To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.”
“Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”
Source: Rights of Man
“Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.”
“Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.”
Source: Rights of Man
“The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.”
Source: Brief sketch of the life of Thomas Paine. Common sense. Epistle to Quakers. The crisis. Public good. Letter to the Abbe Raynal. Dissertations on government, the affairs of the bank, and paper money. Miscellaneous
“To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right.”
Source: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)
“Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.”
“...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.”
Source: THE AGE OF REASON - Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (Including
“It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity, any part of it.”
Source: Collected Writings
