Thomas Paine Quotes

Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

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

Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments.

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.

Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

For freemen like brothers agree; With one spirit endured, they one friendship pursued, And their temple was Liberty Tree

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:-For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order.

Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

Let the world see that this nation can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to her bravest valor in time of war.

The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave.

It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.

Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.

But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. ... Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating; they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion.

Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.

It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.

I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

The birthday of a new world is at hand.

Youth is the seed time of good habits, as well in nations as in individuals.

The balance of power is the scale of peace.

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.

Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.

Time makes more converts than reason.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

He who takes nature for his guide, is not easily beaten out of his argument

The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

Liberty cannot be purchased by a wish.

I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.

It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.

I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.

A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.

Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.

Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.

The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.

Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.

There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of paper money schemes.

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.

From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom.

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree.

The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.

Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.

Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.

A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men.

"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."