“Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess. — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also,Government is for the living, and not for… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government ... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty,… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found. — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself.… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity,… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is that of attempting them before the principles on which they… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason and Liberty: "Had we," said he, "a place to stand… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“Separated from the rest of Europe, she has contracted an unsocial habit of manners, and imagines in others the jealousy she creates… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish the governments which have arisen out of society, or… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
It is for the good of nations, and not for the emolument or aggrandizement of particular individuals, that government ought to be… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected,… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
In the first part of 'Rights of Man' I have endeavoured to show...that there does not exist a right to establish hereditary… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“But any war is harvest to such Governments, however ruinous it may be to a nation. It serves to keep up deceitful… — Thomas Paine Copy Share Image
“No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
The book called the Bible has been voted by men, and decreed by human laws to be the word of God; and the disbelief… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead. — Thomas Paine Copy Share
One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
What is it the Bible teaches us? - raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. — Thomas Paine Copy Share
“It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
But there are times when men have serious thoughts, and it is at such times, when they begin to think, that they begin to… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society. — Thomas Paine Copy Share
“To pass from the extremes of danger to safety-from the tumult of war to the tranquility of peace, though sweet in contemplation, requires a… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
What more does man want to know than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe… — Thomas Paine Copy Share
