“Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.”
“Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.”
Source: Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings of ThomasPaine
“The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world . How happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest.”
Source: The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar
“[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.”
“The most horrible wickedness and cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have troubled the human race began with this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. ... It would be far, far better for us to let a thousand devils roam the world, and publicly preach the doctrine of devils (if there were such a thing, which there isn't), than to let one impostor and monster such a Moses, Joshua, Samuel or the Bible prophets come speaking the so-called word of God, and causing men to believe it.”
“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“Men who are sincere in defending their freedom, will always feel concern at every circumstance which seems to make against them; it is the natural and honest consequence of all affectionate attachments, and the want of it is a vice. But the dejection lasts only for a moment; they soon rise out of it with additional vigor; the glow of hope, courage and fortitude, will, in a little time, supply the place of every inferior passion, and kindle the whole heart into heroism.”
Source: Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings of ThomasPaine
“The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.”
Source: The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life
“The artificial noble shrinks into a dwarf before the noble of nature; and in the few instances (for there are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy, those men despise it.”
Source: Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings of ThomasPaine
“Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a nation should apply itself to reform the system.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make the acquisition of knowledge a real sin.”
Source: The Theological Works
“Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing; and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.”
Source: The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar
“The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.”
“THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.”
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…
“Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together.”
Source: The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
“There is no greater tyranny than that of the dead over the living.”
“The people of America are a people of property; almost every man is a freeholder.”
“The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.”
“I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“The balance of power is the scale of peace.”
Source: Selected Writings of Thomas Paine
“I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.”
“Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits is a subject as worthy of philosophy as of politics.”
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…
“A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating; they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.”
Source: Common Sense, The Crisis, & Other Writings from the American Revolution: (Library of America Paperback Classic)
“Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”
Source: Agrarian Justice, opposed to Agrarian Law, and Agrarian Monopoly. Being a plan for ameliorating the condition of man, by creating in every nation a National Fund
“Commerce is no other than the traffic of two individuals, multiplied on a scale of number; and, by the same rule that Nature intended the intercourse of two, she intended that of all!”
Source: The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
“We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.”
Source: The Crisis Papers, 1776-1783
“Public credit is suspicion asleep.”
Source: The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance
“The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together; and it is only in the last push that one or the other takes the lead.”
Source: The American Crisis
“The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning he blunders and betrays.”
Source: The Political Works of Thomas Paine: In Two Volumes
“The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points--his duty God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.”
Source: The Rights of Man
“It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.”
Source: The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies
“Mutual fear is a principal link in the chain of mutual love.”
Source: The American Crisis
“There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.”
Source: The American Crisis
“There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.”
Source: THE AMERICAN CRISIS – Revolutionary Work Which Inspired the American People to Fight for Their Independence: Including
“Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.”
Source: The Theological Works of Thomas Paine
“The Christian religion is derogatory to the Creator in all its articles. It puts the Creator in an inferior point of view, and places the Christian devil above him. It is he, according to the absurd story in Genesis, that outwits the Creator in the Garden Eden, and steals from Him His favorite creature, man, and at last obliges Him to beget a son, and put that son to death, to get man back again; and this the priests of the Christian religion call redemption.”
Source: COMMON SENSE (Political Classics Series): Advocating Independence to People in the Thirteen Colonies - Addressed to the Inhabitants of America
“The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.”
Source: The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life
“All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.”
Source: THE RIGHTS OF MAN: The French Revolution – Ideals, Arguments & Motives (Political Classic): Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“Evils, like poisons, have their uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach.”
Source: The American Crisis
“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.”
“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”
Source: Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke's Attack on the French Revolution
“Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.”
Source: Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion
“A world of little cares is continually arising, which busy or affluent life knows nothing of, to open the first door to distress. Hunger is not among the postponable wants; and a day, even a few hours, in such a condition is often the crisis of a life of ruin.”
“Titles do not count with posterity.”
“Virtue is not hereditary.”
Source: COMMON SENSE (Political Classics Series): Advocating Independence to People in the Thirteen Colonies - Addressed to the Inhabitants of America
“War ought to be no man's wish.”
Source: Collected Writings
“Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.”
