"From the errors of other nations, let..." - Quote by Thomas Paine

“Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous while they actually lived. . . . "The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast, though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them."”

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.”

“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.”

“No wise man has called a change of opinion in constancy.”

“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”

“We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.”

“He that lives well, is learned enough.”

“State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.”

“One must cease letting oneself be eaten when one tastes best: that is known to those who want to be loved long.”