Top 100 Paine Quotes
#1. [Josiah P. Mendum memorial at Paine Hall]
[He turned] the strait-laced Boston of sixty years ago [into] the enlightened Hub of today, ... to 'destroy bigotry and uproot the evils of superstition.
Josiah P. Mendum
#2. Paine and Joel Barlow attempted to change Jefferson's mind, urging him to settle thrifty German immigrants in the new lands and to permit black families to travel from other states to acquire their own land there, but the sugar interest triumphed,
Christopher Hitchens
#3. Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.
Charles A. Beard
#4. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine
Christopher Hitchens
#5. Louers be war and tak gude heid about Quhome that ye lufe, for quhome ye suffer paine. I lat yow wit, thair is richt few thairout Quhome ye may traist to haue trew lufe agane.
Robert Henryson
#6. What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong.
Patti Smith
#7. On August 26 the Assembly responded by conferring French citizenship upon Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce, Anacharsis Cloots, Johann Pestalozzi, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich Schiller, George Washington, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.
Will Durant
#9. Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.
John Adams
#11. Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought.
Studs Terkel
#12. This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.
Orson Scott Card
#13. Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#14. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors.
Ray Bradbury
#15. European revolutions followed textbooks - Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Karl Marx' Communist Manifesto or Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf - while Mexicans wrote their texts after the fighting was over.
Richard Grabman
#16. Thomas Paine wrote in "The Age of Reason," "In this case, the person who is irreverently called the son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of deaths, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.
Anonymous
#17. 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." Thomas Paine
George Washington
#18. Eager to oppose Thomas Paine's prescription in Common Sense for a huge single-house legislature that purportedly embodied the will of "the people" in its purest form. For Adams, "the people" was a more complicated, multivoiced, hydra-headed thing that had to be enclosed within different chambers.
Joseph J. Ellis
#19. In January 1776, Thomas Paine issued 'Common Sense,' advocating independence from Great Britain.
Mike Crapo
#20. She found, in visits, relief from the aches of old age. "I have Even in my self in times Past Lost the snse of Paine for some time by the Injoyment of good Company." She
Jill Lepore
#21. Feed him ye must, whose food fills you.
And that this pleasure is like raine,
Not sent ye for to drowne your paine,
But for to make it spring againe.
Robert Herrick
#22. The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our history abundantly attest.
Charles Evans Hughes
#23. I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. - Thomas Paine
Zig Ziglar
#24. Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.
Thomas A. Edison
#25. My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.
John Quincy Adams
#26. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. - THOMAS PAINE
Dinty W. Moore
#27. Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.
Fiona Shaw
#28. Thomas Paine needs no monument made with hands; he has erected a monument in the hearts of all lovers of liberty.
Andrew Jackson
#29. In a time when both rights and reason are under several kinds of open and covert attack, the life and writing of Thomas Paine will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend.
Christopher Hitchens
#30. I say this often, THINK. There is something in life called common sense. Webster's says common sense is sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts. Perhaps this is why in 1776, Thomas Paine used these words as a title for the most famous pamphlet ever written.
Jack White
#31. How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.
Burl Ives
#32. In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again.
Thomas A. Edison
#33. The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine.
Christopher Lasch
#35. This is why Paine was careful to downplay the distinction between the rich and the poor. He wanted his American readers to focus on distant kings, not local grandees. He wanted them to break with the Crown, not to disturb the class order.
Nancy Isenberg
#36. The scourge of life, and death's extreme disgrace, The smoke of hell,
that monster called Paine.
Philip Sidney
#37. I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles.
Thomas A. Edison
#38. This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest ... In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.
Christopher Hitchens
#39. Thomas Paine said, if war must come, let it come in our time, so that our children may live in peace. And it must. So, bring it. Hasten The Day.
Billy Roper
#40. ... why do men continue to practice in themselves, the absurdities they despise in others?
Thomas Paine, The rights of man: being an answer to Mr Burke's attack on the French Revolution (2nd edn, Philadelphia, 1791), p. 41.
Thomas Paine
#41. It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man , and the second, Then do as you please.
Albert J. Nock
#42. So, to put it perfectly frankly, I was horny. I was horny and Paine was attractive and charming and he had this tiny little hint of danger that made my lady bits clench in what I was convinced was a prehistoric, biological impulse to mate with an alpha male to pass on good genes to a new generation.
Jessica Gadziala
#43. He (Thomas Paine) saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar; venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne; and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong
Robert Green Ingersoll
#44. To begin with a summary of Paine's astonishing life and career is to commence with a sense of wonder that he was ever able to emerge at all.
Christopher Hitchens
#46. It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.
Thomas Paine
#47. Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
#49. There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.
Thomas Paine
#50. 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
#51. It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.
Thomas Paine
#52. The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.
Thomas Paine
#53. The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.
Thomas Paine
#54. The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.
Thomas Paine
#55. 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
#56. 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.
Thomas Paine
#57. Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death.
Thomas Paine
#58. He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
Thomas Paine
#60. The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.
Thomas Paine
#61. 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
#62. The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination in any part of it, which it would do if it was the Word of God. Those who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests always take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight.
Thomas Paine
#63. I have spoken of Jonah, and of the story of him and the whale. - A fit story for ridicule, if it was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything.
Thomas Paine
#64. 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.
Thomas Paine
#65. If all with doubts about the factual basis of their religion will but commit to their resolution through direct and unfettered inquiry, our country - and with it the world - will see a rebirth of Liberty,
Thomas Paine
#66. 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.
Thomas Paine
#67. Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
Thomas Paine
#68. The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
Thomas Paine
#69. 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
#70. A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.
Thomas Paine
#72. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
Thomas Paine
#73. Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.
Thomas Paine
#74. 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.
Thomas Paine
#75. 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.
Thomas Paine
#76. I think electric cars can help save Detroit. They reflect good decision-making, and there has been bad decision making in the auto industry for so long, in my view.
Chris Paine
#78. The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
Thomas Paine
#79. It is not because the right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.
Thomas Paine
#80. Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed
and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
Thomas Paine
#81. Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.
Thomas Paine
#82. "Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."
Thomas Paine
#83. (Always remembering, that our strength is continental, not provincial
Thomas Paine
#84. 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
#85. 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.
Thomas Paine
#86. When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
Thomas Paine
#87. Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
Thomas Paine
#88. 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
#89. If nobody will be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes.
Thomas Paine
#90. Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
Thomas Paine
#91. The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.
Thomas Paine
#92. 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.
Thomas Paine
#93. Everything wonderful in appearance has been ascribed to angels, to devils, or to saints. Everything ancient has some legendary tale annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not escaped their practice of corrupting everything.
Thomas Paine
#94. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.
Thomas Paine
#95. The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture.
Thomas Paine
#96. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.
Thomas Paine
#97. And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves, while the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
Robert Treat Paine
#98. 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.
Thomas Paine
#99. The people of America are a people of property; almost every man is a freeholder.
Thomas Paine
#100. 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.
Thomas Paine
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