Government Quotes by Thomas Paine

A government of our own is our natural right

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

Government is best which governs least

— Thomas Paine

The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.

— Thomas Paine

Government is a necessary evil

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

“Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government.”

— Thomas Paine

Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.

— Thomas Paine

Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

— Thomas Paine

“A hereditary monarch is as absurd a position as a hereditary doctor or mathematician.”

— Thomas Paine

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?

— Thomas Paine

And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession…

— Thomas Paine

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires…

— Thomas Paine

When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind…

— Thomas Paine

“A government or an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear, and consequently has nothing to conceal;”

— Thomas Paine

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an…

— Thomas Paine

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst…

— Thomas Paine

There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state. The construction of government ought to be such…

— Thomas Paine

It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have…

— Thomas Paine

A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical…

— Thomas Paine

Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his…

— Thomas Paine

The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the…

— Thomas Paine

It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in…

— Thomas Paine

Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against…

— Thomas Paine

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself.…

— Thomas Paine

Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and…

— Thomas Paine

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only…

— Thomas Paine

“Nothing can appear more contradictory than the principles on which the old governments began, and the condition to which society, civilisation and…

— Thomas Paine

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may…

— Thomas Paine

If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of…

— Thomas Paine

“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be…

— Thomas Paine

It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There…

— Thomas Paine

“There is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at…

— Thomas Paine

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that…

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

— Thomas Paine

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

— Thomas Paine

Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.

— Thomas Paine