Top 100 Paine Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.
Thomas Paine
#7. The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.
Thomas Paine
#8. The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.
Thomas Paine
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. [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
#13. 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
#14. He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
Thomas Paine
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
Thomas Paine
#24. The moral duty of man consists of imitatingthe moral goodness and beneficence of God,manifested in the creation, toward all His creatures.
Thomas Paine
#25. 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
#26. A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.
Thomas Paine
#28. 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
#29. Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.
Thomas Paine
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#36. 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
#37. The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
Thomas Paine
#38. 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
#39. It is not because the right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.
Thomas Paine
#40. Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed
and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
Thomas Paine
#41. Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.
Thomas Paine
#42. "Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."
Thomas Paine
#43. (Always remembering, that our strength is continental, not provincial
Thomas Paine
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.
Thomas Paine
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
Thomas Paine
#53. The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.
Thomas Paine
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.
Thomas Paine
#58. The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture.
Thomas Paine
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.
John Adams
#62. 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
#63. The people of America are a people of property; almost every man is a freeholder.
Thomas Paine
#64. 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
#65. 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.
Thomas Paine
#66. 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
#68. The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
Thomas Paine
#69. Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.
Thomas Paine
#70. Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
Thomas Paine
#71. The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.
Thomas Paine
#72. 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
#73. When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
Thomas Paine
#74. How strangely is antiquity treated! To answer some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world.
Thomas Paine
#75. The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.
Thomas Paine
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments ...
Thomas Paine
#79. Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
Thomas Paine
#80. A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be.
Thomas Paine
#81. 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.
Thomas Paine
#82. The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
Thomas Paine
#84. Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
Thomas Paine
#85. A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
Thomas Paine
#86. Those who want to reap the benefits of this great nation must bear the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
#87. Anticipating this loss had a way of refining memory, filing it down to the purest, rawest form of itself. My clouded perceptions grew clearer. And someday soon I'd have to confront that. But not yet.
Wendy Paine Miller
#88. 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
#89. The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
Thomas Paine
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power ...
Thomas Paine
#93. 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.
Thomas Paine
#94. The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.
Thomas Paine
#95. Taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes
Thomas Paine
#96. Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.
Thomas Paine
#97. Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.
Thomas Paine
#98. The period of debate is closed. Arms, as a last resource, must decide the contest.
Thomas Paine
#99. 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
#100. Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.
Thomas Paine
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