Thomas Paine Quotes

395 quotes in 3755 categories

• ...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.
• The United States should be an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty.
• This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled,…
• From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?
• The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
• The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to…
• The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.
• It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.
• When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for…
• The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.
• Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.
• Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to…
• It is for the good of nations, and not for the emolument or aggrandizement of particular individuals, that government ought to be established, and that…
• Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
• Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.
• He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
• Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.
• Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.
• The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years,…
• Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating…

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