"I bring reason to your ears, and,..." - Quote by Thomas Paine

“In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.”

“The earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race." As the land gets cultivated, "it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is in individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent..to every person, rich or poor...because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created, or inherited from those who did”

“To live with our enemies as if they may some time become our friends, and to live with our friends as if they may some time become our enemies, is not a moral but a political maxim”

“The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.”

“There are two types of mind . . . the mathematical, and what might be called the intuitive. The former arrives at its views slowly, but they are firm and rigid; the latter is endowed with greater flexibility and applies itself simultaneously to the diverse lovable parts of that which it loves.”

“By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?”

“Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.”

“The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.”

“What Is, is more important than What Should Be.”