Top 100 Thomas Paine Quotes
#1. 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.
Thomas Paine
#2. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon as, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we
Thomas Paine
#3. 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.
Thomas Paine
#4. 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 ass for a lion.
Thomas Paine
#6. It is not because the right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.
Thomas Paine
#7. Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.
Thomas Paine
#8. "Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."
Thomas Paine
#9. And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.
Thomas Paine
#10. Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.
Thomas Paine
#11. 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.
Thomas Paine
#12. Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice.
Thomas Paine
#13. The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.
Thomas Paine
#14. 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.
Thomas Paine
#15. A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be.
Thomas Paine
#16. 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.
Thomas Paine
#17. All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Age of Reason
Thomas Paine
#18. It is by tracing things to their origin, that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them.
Thomas Paine
#19. As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination, and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by any personal altercation; and the man who cannot do this, is not fit for a public character.
Thomas Paine
#20. To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.
Thomas Paine
#21. It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
Thomas Paine
#22. 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.
Thomas Paine
#23. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all.
Thomas Paine
#24. We do not admit the authority of the church with respect to its pretended infallibility, its manufactured miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins. It was by propagating that belief and supporting it with fire that she kept up her temporal power.
Thomas Paine
#25. I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.
Thomas Paine
#26. I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.
Thomas Paine
#27. Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.
Thomas Paine
#28. for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
Thomas Paine
#29. From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?
Thomas Paine
#30. The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.
Thomas Paine
#31. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.
Thomas Paine
#32. Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
Thomas Paine
#33. Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
#34. The accumulation of great wealth is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it, the consequence of which is that the working people perish in old age and the employer abounds in affluence.
Thomas Paine
#35. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state. The construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity.
Thomas Paine
#36. Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.
Thomas Paine
#37. Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:-For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.
Thomas Paine
#38. Youth is the seed time of good habits, as well in nations as in individuals.
Thomas Paine
#40. 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. But
Thomas Paine
#41. Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.
Thomas Paine
#42. For freemen like brothers agree; With one spirit endured, they one friendship pursued, And their temple was Liberty Tree
Thomas Paine
#43. I choose my life to this free. I choose my life to be this way
Thomas Paine
#44. We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
Thomas Paine
#45. THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD:
Thomas Paine
#46. In a chariot of light from the region of the day, the Goddess of Liberty came. She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love, the plant she named Liberty Tree.
Thomas Paine
#47. What more does man want to know than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this with the force it is impossible to repel, if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course.
Thomas Paine
#48. 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.
Thomas Paine
#49. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
Thomas Paine
#50. It may perhaps be said that it signifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but it signifies much to the living; it either tortures their feelings or hardens their hearts ...
Thomas Paine
#51. 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.
Thomas Paine
#52. Common sense will tell us, that
the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the
most improper to defend us.
Thomas Paine
#53. And this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.
Thomas Paine
#54. It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt
Thomas Paine
#55. To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right.
Thomas Paine
#56. Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.
Thomas Paine
#57. What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.
Thomas Paine
#58. It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.
Thomas Paine
#59. The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.
Thomas Paine
#60. It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
Thomas Paine
#61. 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.
Thomas Paine
#62. Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?
Thomas Paine
#63. 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.
Thomas Paine
#64. The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
Thomas Paine
#65. In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experiences as we go.
Thomas Paine
#66. The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
Thomas Paine
#67. Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
Thomas Paine
#69. 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.
Thomas Paine
#70. No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.
Thomas Paine
#71. He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument
Thomas Paine
#72. 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.
Thomas Paine
#73. 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.
Thomas Paine
#74. 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.
Thomas Paine
#75. All men can understand what representation is; and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.
Thomas Paine
#76. 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.
Thomas Paine
#77. A man does not serve God when he prays, for it is himself he is trying to serve
Thomas Paine
#78. That a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.
Thomas Paine
#79. Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
Thomas Paine
#80. Nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice.
Thomas Paine
#81. A government or an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear, and consequently has nothing to conceal;
Thomas Paine
#82. A hereditary monarch is as absurd a position as a hereditary doctor or mathematician.
Thomas Paine
#83. But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.
Thomas Paine
#84. 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 ...
Thomas Paine
#85. Let them call me rebel, I feel no concern from it.
Thomas Paine
#86. To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.
Thomas Paine
#88. There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.
Thomas Paine
#89. The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.
Thomas Paine
#91. Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
Thomas Paine
#92. Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
Thomas Paine
#94. Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.
Thomas Paine
#95. An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
Thomas Paine
#96. 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.
Thomas Paine
#97. And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
Thomas Paine
#98. In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.
Thomas Paine
#99. His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.
Thomas Paine
#100. Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
Thomas Paine
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