Thomas Paine
94 quotes
Biography
Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution.
"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."
"The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark."
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."
"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."
"Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul."
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."
"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."
"It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest."
"All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe."
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
"Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell."
"This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
"A man who is so exceedingly civil that for the sake of quietude and a peaceable name will silently see the community imposed upon, or their rights invaded, may, in his principles, be a good man, but cannot be stiled a useful one, neither does he come up to the full mark of his duty; for silence becomes a kind of crime when it operates as a cover or an encouragement to the guilty."
"Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime."
"War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances ... that no human wisdom can calculate the end."
"And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) 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."
"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man."
"[W]e hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue."
"We think it also necessary to express our astonishment that a government, desirous of being called , should prefer connection with the most despotic and arbitrary powers in Europe."
"We live to improve, or we live in vain"
"As to riots and tumults, let those answer for them, who, by willful misrepresentations, endeavor to excite and promote them; or who seek to stun the sense of the nation, and to lose the great cause of public good in the outrages of a misinformed mob. We take our ground on principles that require no such riotous aid. We have nothing to apprehend from the poor; for we are pleading their cause. And we fear not proud oppression, for we have truth on our side."
"It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries."
"Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, which the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance."
"And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick."