"Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which..." - Quote by Thomas Paine

“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.”

“If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.”

“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?”

“The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary.”

“Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.”

“The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres.”

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

“One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.”

“Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.”