Thomas Paine Quotes

“Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!”

“Virtue is not hereditary.”

“There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state. The construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity.”

“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”

“Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.”

“To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.”

“I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state; up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.”

“Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.”

“It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.”

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

“To bring the matter to one point, Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says, No, to this question, is an independent, for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own law, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy which this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like.”

“The more we bestow the richer we become.”

“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.”

“Money, when considered as the fruit of many years' industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow's dowry and children's portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.”

“It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.”

“We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.”

“The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.”

“Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.”

“If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.”

“It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.”

“Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.”

“The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly.”

“As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavor to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure.”

“Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”