Thomas Paine Quotes:

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree.

Topics: Cheer, Blow, Gun, Liberty Tree

When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.

source: - Thomas Paine (2016). “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…”, p.724, e-artnow

Topics: Taken, Rights, Perfect

For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.

Topics: Men, Forever, Might

When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government

Topics: Happiness, Country, Ignorance

I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state; up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.

Topics: Littles, Too Much, Revolution

Men should not petition for rights, but take them

Topics: Men, Rights, Petitions

[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.

Topics: Christian, Church, Use, Human Inventions

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate predjudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.

Topics: Country, War, Men

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.

Topics: Law, Succeed, Generations, Repealing

I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.

Topics: Fashion, Mistake, May, Separation Of Powers

I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America - it is the Country from whence all reformations must originally spring - I despair of seeing an Abolition of the infernal trafic in Negroes - we must push that matter further on your side the water - I wish that a few well instructed Negroes could be sent among their Brethren in Bondage, for until they are enabled to take their own part nothing will be done.

Topics: Country, Spring, Your Side

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?

Topics: Men, Age, World

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

Topics: Remembrance, Atheism, Positive Atheism

Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.

Topics: Land, Community

In the first part of 'Rights of Man' I have endeavoured to show...that there does not exist a right to establish hereditary government...because hereditary government always means a government yet to come, and the case always is, that the people who are to live afterwards, have always the same right to choose a government for themselves, as the people had who have lived before them.

Topics: Mean, Men, Rights

If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.

source: - Thomas Paine (1859). “Complete Works”

Topics: Believe, Tolerance, I Believe

I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.

Topics: War, Fighting, Order

It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.

Topics: Government, Religion, Reviews

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.

Topics: America, Historical, World

The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.

Topics: Home, Government, People

There is no greater tyranny than that of the dead over the living.

Topics: Tyranny

To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.

Topics: Men, Voting, Slavery

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.

Topics: Life, Happiness, Religious, Age Of Reason

Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying

Topics: Death, Dying, Uncertain

As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavor to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure.

Topics: Believe, Rights, Political, Legislators

The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.

Topics: Responsibility, Government, People, Packers

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.

Topics: Country, War, Views

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.

Topics: Country, Real, Party, Depreciate

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.

Topics: Law, Support, Gold

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.

Topics: Men, Scarcity, Credit, Depreciate, Paper Money

Virtue is not hereditary.

Topics: Virtue

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.

Topics: Children, Mean, Years, Airy, Dowry

It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies.

Topics: Lying, Numbers, Unity

How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.

Topics: Running, Power, Watches, Encroachment

Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order...

Topics: Gun, Order, Law, Patriotic Gun, Militia

Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.

Topics: Life, Military, Spirit

Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.

Topics: Class, Perfect, Temptation

Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.

Topics: Weed, Together, Suspicion

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

Topics: Names, Causes, Tyranny, Security And Liberty

The period of debate is closed. Arms, as a last resource, must decide the contest.

Topics: Arms, Lasts, Conservative

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Topics: Veterans Day, Time, Peace, American Revolution, Criminal Mind

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Topics: Inspirational, War, 4th Of July, American Revolution, Inspirational Military

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Life

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

source: - Thomas Paine (1819). “The American Crisis”, p.190

Topics: Life, War, Integrity, Good Character, Inspirational Character

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Wisdom, World Religions, World Citizen

I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.

Topics: Country, Patriotism, Liberty

The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.

Topics: Fall, Men, Feet

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

source: - Common Sense (1776)

Topics: Motivation, War, 4th Of July, Founding, State Government

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Independence And Freedom, Independence Day Patriotic

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

source: - Thomas Paine, Bruce Kuklick (2000). “Paine: Political Writings”, p.100, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Trust, Men, Accountability

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.

Topics: 4th Of July, Government, Want, Patron, Punisher

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.

Topics: Government, Liberty, Principles

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

Topics: War, Government, Bystanders, Blinded, English Government

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Topics: Fear, Motivation, Tyrants

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

Topics: Education, Dark, Mind

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Topics: Pain, Freedom, Fear, Independence And Freedom, Independence Day Patriotic

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.

Topics: Truth, Men, May

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Topics: Inspirational, Christian, Pain, Turkish, Religious Faith

The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.

Topics: Revolution, Principles, Danger

Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.

Topics: Hands, Government, Economics, Tax Day, Crevice

I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.

Topics: Country, War, Rights

Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.

Topics: Freedom, Blessing, Support

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.

Topics: Truth, Eye, Mind, Discovering The Truth, Through The Eyes

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.

Topics: Family, Running, Children, Debt By Founding Fathers, Eminence

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Topics: Strength, Heart, Reflection, Strength And Perseverance, Strength Of Mind

Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another. It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man.

Topics: Men, Class, Rights, Origin Of Man

If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of Court Governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices.

Topics: Ocean, Reflection, Men, Pretence

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

source: - Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Paine and Jefferson on Liberty”, p.25, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Topics: Pain, Thinking, Common Sense, Formidable, Superficial Things

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

Topics: Peace, Truth, War

Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.

Topics: Men, Land, Community

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

Topics: Freedom, Equality, Men, Individual Differences, Freedom Of Thought

No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.

source: - Thomas Paine, John P. Kaminski (2002). “Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion”, p.81, Rowman & Littlefield

Topics: Country, People, Matter, Absolute Power, Separation Of Powers

I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

Topics: Children, Trouble, My Children, World Peace Day

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.

Topics: Motivation, Fear, Government, 2 Amendment, Patriotic Gun

Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.

Topics: Self Esteem, Fighting, Enemy

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Topics: 4th Of July, Medicine, Religion, Funny Sarcastic, Reasoning

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

Topics: Atheist, Mean, Heart, Inconsistent, Derogatory

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Topics: Motivation, Men, Personality, Mean People, Age Of Reason

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

Topics: Motivation, War, Government, Contagion

In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.

Topics: Kings, War, Pride, Chronology, No War

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

source: - Thomas Paine, John P. Kaminski (2002). “Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion”, p.123, Rowman & Littlefield

Topics: Truth, Honest, Dare, Honest Truth

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

Topics: Men, Rights, Voting, Representatives

There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.

source: - Thomas Paine (1830). “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”, p.281

Topics: Men, Two, Class, Government Programs

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

Topics: Change, Motivation, 4th Of July, American Revolution

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

Topics: Murder, Cruelty, Teach, Debauchery, Religious Belief

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

Topics: Peace, War, 4th Of July

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

source: - Thomas Paine, Bruce Kuklick (2000). “Paine: Political Writings”, p.162, Cambridge University Press

Topics: Men, Thinking, Slavery

A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.

source: - Thomas Paine, John P. Kaminski (2002). “Citizen Paine: Thomas Paine's Thoughts on Man, Government, Society, and Religion”, p.69, Rowman & Littlefield

Topics: Exercise, Government, Limits, Separation Of Powers

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Topics: Motivation, Heart, Mind

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

Topics: Atheist, Philosophy, Men

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Inspiring, Inspirational Diversity, Integrity And Character

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Topics: God, Country, Freedom

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.

Topics: Inspirational, Positive, Strength, Real Men, Best Smile

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

Topics: Trust, Motivation, Mistake, Formidable

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Topics: Men, Belief, Murder

One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ***** for a lion.

Topics: Kings, Giving, Lions, Hereditary

Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.

Topics: Common Sense, Common

Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.

Topics: Wise, Men, Matter

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Topics: Love, Europe, Tyrants, Hunted, Old World

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

Topics: Country, 4th Of July, Fighting, Honest Man

When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.

Topics: Country, 4th Of July, Men

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.

Topics: Motivation, Reason, Possibility

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

Topics: Truth, Men, Thinking

But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

Topics: Truth, Liberty, Serious

A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

Topics: Moving, Party, Littles, Common Purpose, National Unity

Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.

Topics: Motivation, Mean, Soul, Bane

Time makes more converts than reason.

Topics: Life, Time, Motivation

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.

Topics: Men, Too Much, Separation, Unwise, Separation Of Powers

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

Topics: Contradiction, New Testament, Absurdity, Blasphemy, Testament

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivation, 4th Of July

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

Topics: Motivation, Fear, Children

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

Topics: Pain, Freedom, Patriotic, New Horizons

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

Topics: Atheist, Motivation, Use

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

Topics: Lying, Biblical, Religion

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Topics: Pain, Motivation, Serious

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

Topics: Christian, Religious, Religion, Christian Atheist, Founding Fathers Anti Religion

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

Topics: Religious, Religion, Bipolar, Religious Belief, Lunatic Asylums

Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.

Topics: Country, Winter, Cities, Inaugural, Inaugural Speech

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

Topics: Motivation, Law, Church, Christian Church, Christian Persecution

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

Topics: Motivation, Men, Teach

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

Topics: Happiness, Motivation, Integrity, Perfect Happiness, Religion And Government

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

Topics: Teacher, Crazy, Anger, Words Of Anger, Rage And Anger

The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.

Topics: Heart, Daggers, Superstitions

The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax

Topics: Liberty, Speech, Syntax, Parts Of Speech, American Constitution

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.

Topics: Children, Couple, School, Social Responsibility, Widowed

But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.

Topics: God, Kings, America

Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

Topics: Country, Kings, Law

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?

Topics: Miracle, Needs, Creation, Deist

The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.

Topics: Handwriting, Creation, Existence, Forgery, Deism

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.

Topics: Believe, Men, Thinking, Deism

Government is best which governs least

Topics: Government, Limited Government, Price Of Freedom, Tyranny Of The Majority, Eternal Vigilance

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

source: - Thomas Paine (2016). “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…”, p.276, e-artnow

Topics: Country, Ignorance, Opposites

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

Topics: Religion, Priests, Trade

The fable of Christ and his twelve apostles is a parody of the sun and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, copied from the ancient religions of the Eastern world. Every thing told of Christ has reference to the sun. His reported resurrection is at sunrise, and that on the first day of the week; that is, on the day anciently dedicated to the sun, and from thence called Sunday.

Topics: Sunday, Zodiac, Sunrise, Days Of The Week

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.

Topics: Government, Constitution

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.

Topics: Philosophy, Circles, Study, Natural Philosophy

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Topics: Government, Wickedness, Uniting

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.

Topics: Wickedness, Humankind, Sincerely, Detest, Age Of Reason

Man must go back to nature for information.

Topics: Nature, Men, Information

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

Topics: Men, Rights

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Topics: Science, Men, Principles

The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.

Topics: Years, Purpose, Debt, National Debt

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

Topics: Pain, War, 4th Of July, Hereditary

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

Topics: Names, Firsts, Plunder, Income Tax, Tax Day

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

source: - Thomas Paine (2016). “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…”, p.16, e-artnow

Topics: Opportunity, Men, Knowing, Insolent, Selected

What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.

Topics: Believe, Religion, Debauchery

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Topics: Wisdom, Money, Motivation, Unforeseen

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.

Topics: Vanity, Age, Generations, Insolent, Presumption

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

Topics: Motivation, War, Government

A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.

Topics: Trust, Government, People, Usurpation

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

Topics: Class, Sublime, Steps

The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong.

Topics: Strong, Gun, Balance, Pro Gun, Balance Of Power

Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

Topics: Men, Sight, Ruffian

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.

Topics: Government, People, Constitution

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.

Topics: Wise, Men, Ideas

The birthday of a new world is at hand.

Topics: Hands, World

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.

Topics: Lying, Men, Genius, Dormant

The Creation speaks a universal language, independent of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this Word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Topics: Independent, Men, Doe

The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.

Topics: Rights, Voting

I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered...

Topics: Art, Simple, Government, No Common Sense

The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up.

Topics: Jesus, Men, Apples

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.

Topics: Christian, Common Sense, Common

The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.

Topics: Children, Father, Justice

Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.

Topics: Ignorance, Crime, Duty

...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

Topics: Atheism, Wickedness, Would Be, Anti Religious, Voluptuous

Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?

Topics: War, Believe, Thinking

It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.

Topics: War, Justice, Violence

And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.

Topics: Heart, Men, Religion

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.

Topics: Lying, Believe, Men

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.

Topics: Taken, Mean, Rights

Of all the tyrannies that effect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

Topics: Religion, World, Christianity

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

Topics: Christian, Ignorance, Age, Age Of Reason

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivation, Character, Inspirational Character, Best Character

As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men.

Topics: Lying, Book, Men, Blasphemy

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

Topics: Appreciation, Pain, Democracy, Obtaining, Appreciate What You Have

To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.

Topics: Motivation, Patriotic, People, Loaded

Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.

Topics: Teacher, Educational, Persons

It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

Topics: Fake People, Names, Devil

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

Topics: Atheist, Lying, Book

Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.

Topics: Ambition, Mean, Men, Systems Of Government, Perfidy

Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.

Topics: War, Victory, Cost

My mind is my own church.

Topics: Motivation, Mind, Church

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

Topics: Character, Men, Feelings

The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

Topics: Pain, Motivation, Government, Common Interests

The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.

Topics: War, Violence, Foxes

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

Topics: Book, Biblical, Bible Reading

Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS...

Topics: Character, Home, Patriotism, American Patriot

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

source: - The American Crisis, 19 Dec. 1776

Topics: Love, Summer, Country, Inaugural Address, American Revolution

We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.

Topics: Wisdom, Government, Hands, Tax Day, Crevice

Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"

Topics: Men, Race, Ignorant

Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'tis time to part.

Topics: Nature, Blood, Voice, Weeping

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

Topics: Integrity, Character, Thinking

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

Topics: Happiness, Faith, Respect

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.

Topics: Education, Ignorance, Government

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.

Topics: Christian, Men, Religion

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.

Topics: Christian, Data, Religion, Anti Christian, Christian Atheist

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Topics: Lying, Believe, Men, Religion And Government, Age Of Reason

These are the times that try men's souls.

Topics: Veterans Day, Time, Motivation

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

Topics: Giving, Heaven, Would Be

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true...

Topics: Country, Money, War