Paine

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
  -- Thomas Paine, A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America
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These are the times that try men's souls.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
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Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
 thomas paine, Rights of Man
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To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
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Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
 thomas paine, Rights of Man
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Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
  -- Thomas Paine
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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.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
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The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.
  -- Thomas Paine
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It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
  -- Thomas Paine
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One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
  -- Thomas Paine
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I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
  -- Thomas Paine
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A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
  -- Thomas Paine
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We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
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THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. 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
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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My own mind is my own church.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Time makes more converts than reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
  -- Thomas Paine, Works of  -- Thomas Paine
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He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
  -- Thomas Paine
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I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.
  -- Thomas Paine
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If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
  -- Thomas Paine
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My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie. 
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom,
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
  -- Thomas Paine
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One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Give me liberty, or give me death.
 Thomas Payne, Common Sense
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All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writing of  -- Thomas Paine
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true...
  -- Thomas Paine
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  -- Thomas Paine
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...taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
 thomas paine
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Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer...
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
  -- Thomas Paine
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To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured
  -- Thomas Paine
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Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate predjudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
  -- Thomas Paine
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I do not choose to be a common person. It is my right to be uncommon-- if I can. I seek opportunity--not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the State look after me. I want to take the calculated risk--to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole; I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and to act for myself, to enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, This, with God's help, I have done. All this is what it means to be an Entrepreneur!
  -- Thomas Paine
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In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Common sense will tell us, that
the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the
most improper to defend us.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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     ,         ...   
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
  -- Thomas Paine
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But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.

Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the other.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine
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It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication; after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
  -- Thomas Paine, Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of the True and Fabulous Theology
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Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice: but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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That government is best which governs least.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of Court Governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected
  -- Thomas Paine
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Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed
and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
  -- Thomas Paine
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But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The American Crisis

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. 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.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.
  -- Thomas Paine
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And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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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.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings?

In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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...for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
  -- Thomas Paine
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I love the man that smiles at trouble: that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
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I prefer peace, but if trouble must come, let it be in my time that my children may know peace.
 Thomas Payne
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Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
  -- Thomas Paine
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O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but
the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.
Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa,
have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and England
hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in
time an asylum for mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happinesspositively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness. 
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True & Fabulous Theology
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Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.
  -- Thomas Paine
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When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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That many good men have believed this strange fable [Christianity], and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few, because their government is just: and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
  -- Thomas Paine the 5th, The Crisis
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He that is the author of war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Reason obeys itselt; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it's dearness only that gives everthing its value.
 Thomas Payne
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But with respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the divine object of adoration, it is man bringing to his maker the fruits of his heart; and though these fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of everyone is accepted.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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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.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation. It is as if He has said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call ours, "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, and learn from my munificence to all to be kind to each other.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments...
  -- Thomas Paine
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The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside.... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; . . . the weak will become prey.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'tis time to part.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense and Other Writings
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It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A hereditary monarch is as absurd a position as a hereditary doctor or mathematician.
  -- Thomas Paine
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As to the ancient historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, we credit them as far as they relate things probable and credible, and no further: for if we do, we must believe the two miracles which Tacitus relates were performed by Vespasian, that of curing a lame man, and a blind man, in just the same manner as the same things are told of Jesus Christ by his historians. We must also believe the miracles cited by Josephus, that of the sea of Pamphilia opening to let Alexander and his army pass, as is related of the Red Sea in Exodus. These miracles are quite as well authenticated as the Bible miracles, and yet we do not believe them; consequently the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.
  -- Thomas Paine
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He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine,
he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He
follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the
amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change
his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say-
thou knowest not so well as I.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.

[An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry]
  -- Thomas Paine
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Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But any war is harvest to such Governments, however ruinous it may be to a nation. It serves to keep up deceitful expectations, which prevent a people looking into the defects and abuses of Government. It is the "lo here!" and the "lo there!" that amuses and cheats the multitude.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.
  -- Thomas Paine
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These are the times that try men's souls...yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives every thing value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.
  -- Thomas Paine
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An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. Neither the Channel nor the Rhine will arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.
  -- Thomas Paine
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It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, government negatively by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse. Government creates distinctions.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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(To the newly graduated)
There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time", or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations, by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it...Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true) he would cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it  not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New] Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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What is it the Bible teaches us?  repine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us?  to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy ... to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous ... let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb."

[Letter Addressed To The Addressers On The Late Proclamation, 1792 (Paine's response to the charge of "seditious libel" brought against him after the publication of The Rights of Man)]
  -- Thomas Paine, The  -- Thomas Paine Reader
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If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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That which we obtain too easily, we esteem lightly.
  -- Thomas Paine
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What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into kings and subjects. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and band, the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Kill the king but spare the man.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
  -- Thomas Paine, Public Good: Being an Examination Into the Claim of Virginia to the Vacant Western Territory and of the Right of the United States to the Same to Which Are Added, Proposals for Laying Off a New State, to Be Applied Asa Fund for Carrying on the War
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Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.
  -- Thomas Paine
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As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings. All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have been very smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the attention of countries which have their governments yet to form. "Render unto Csar the things which are Csar's" is the scripture doctrine of courts, yet it is no support of monarchical government, for the Jews at that time were without a king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time, or of commanding forever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall be organized, or how administered.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT,
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?

...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not
present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation
prepared to receive us the instant we are born a world furnished to
our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour
down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or
wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on. Are these things,
and the blessings they indicate in future, nothing to, us? Can our gross
feelings be excited by no other subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is
the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it
but a sacrifice of the Creator?
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The Jews have made him [Yahweh] the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things, they must have supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgement.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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This necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessing of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible.

It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that  -- Thomas Paine understands it not.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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 why do men continue to practice in themselves, the absurdities they despise in others?

 -- Thomas Paine, The rights of man: being an answer to Mr Burkes attack on the French Revolution (2nd edn, Philadelphia, 1791), p. 41.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
  -- Thomas Paine
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I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive, that although laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet that they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non repealing passes for consent.
  -- Thomas Paine
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We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and new Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries
  -- Thomas Paine, The life and writings of  -- Thomas Paine
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The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Arguing with one who will not accept facts is like administering medicine to the dead.
  -- Thomas Paine, Writings of  -- Thomas Paine - Volume 1 (1774-1779): The American Crisis
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The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Every child born in the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is this new to him as it was to the first that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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I have spoken of Jonah, and of the story of him and the whale.  A fit story for ridicule, if it was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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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 expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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for as we are never in a proper condition of doing justice to others, while we continue under the influence of some leading partiality, so neither are we capable of doing it to ourselves while we remain fettered by any obstinate prejudice. And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony, be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Virtue is not hereditary.
  -- Thomas Paine
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In mourning the plumage, he forgot the dying bird
 thomas paine
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The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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With respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such parts as tell us of the resurrection and ascension of Christ, any person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could have made such books; for the story is most wretchedly told.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated
immediately from God to man. It is revelation to the first person
only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged
to believe it. It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation
that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation
is necessarily limited to the first communication.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by profession.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Whoever will take the trouble of reading the book ascribed to Isaiah, will find it one of the most wild and disorderly compositions ever put together; it has neither beginning, middle, nor end; and, except a short historical part, and a few sketches of history in the first two or three chapters, is one continued incoherent, bombastical rant, full of extravagant metaphor, without application, and destitute of meaning; a school-boy would scarcely have been excusable for writing such stuff; it is (at least in translation) that kind of composition and false taste that is properly called prose run mad.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The laying of a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The answer of Solon on the question, 'Which is the most perfect popular govemment,' has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, 'That,' says he, 'where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.There was more knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism.

It is owing to this long interregnum of science, and to no other cause, that we have now to look back through a vast chasm of many hundred years to the respectable characters we call the Ancients. Had the progression of knowledge gone on proportionably with the stock that before existed, that chasm would have been filled up with characters rising superior in knowledge to each other; and those Ancients we now so much admire would have appeared respectably in the background of the scene. But the christian system laid all waste; and if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills beyond.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is only in the CREATION that all the ideas and concepts of the word of God can come together. The Creation speaks a universal language that does not depend on any human speech or language. It is an eternal 'original copy' that all men can read. It cannot be faked or counterfeited. It cannot be lost or changed. It cannot be kept secret. It does not depend on man deciding whether to publish it or not. It publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all the nations, and all the worlds. This natural word of God reveals to us all that man needs to know of God.
  -- Thomas Paine
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if every one is left to judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each others religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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It is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.

To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects than can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Nothing can appear more contradictory than the principles on which the old governments began, and the condition to which society, civilisation and commerce are capable of carrying mankind. Government, one the old system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandisement of itself; on the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society. The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the later promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation. The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence, by the small quantity of taxes it requires.
  -- Thomas Paine
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One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of heredetary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal,
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.
  -- Thomas Paine
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These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything it's 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.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Political Works of  -- Thomas Paine. Volume 2 of 2
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in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also,Government is for the living, and not for the dead; it is the living only that has any right in it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Revolution and the Early Republic as witnessed by Mercy Otis Warren and Others
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Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child,cannot be true.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong,gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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All this is nothing better than the jargon of a conjuror, who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
  -- Thomas Paine, Dissertations on First Principles of Government
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The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country;
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of ancient mythologists, accomodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and yet it remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected.

As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.

As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is the pride of kings that throws man kind into confusion.
  -- Thomas Paine
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To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children). This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books [the Bible], they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous. When it is said, as in the Testament, 'If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,' it is assassinating the dignity of forbearance, and sinking man into a spaniel.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
 payne thomas
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Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the
world, and my religion is to do good.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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ociety is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happinesspositively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.

I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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the harder the conflict,the more glorious the triumph
  -- Thomas Paine
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I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
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O mundo  meu pas, os humanos so meus irmos e fazer o bem  minha religio.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood: and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then the men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in the Old Testament.

Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falsehood?
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The story of the angel announcing what the church calls the immaculate conception, is not so much as mentioned in the books ascribed to Mark, and John; and is differently related in Matthew and Luke. The former says the angel, appeared to Joseph; the latter says, it was to Mary; but either Joseph or Mary was the worst evidence that could have been thought of; for it was others that should have testified for them, and not they for themselves. Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Certainly she would not. Why then are we to believe the same thing of another girl whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where? How strange and inconsistent is it, that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable story, should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and imposture.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I have now gone through the examination of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and when it is considered that the whole space of time, from the crucifixion to what is called the ascension, is but a few days, apparently not more than three or four, and that all the circumstances are reported to have happened nearly about the same spot, Jerusalem, it is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in those books. They are more numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding, when I began this examination, and far more so than I had any idea of when I wrote the former part of 'The Age of Reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. 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.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretences for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey, and permits none to escape without a tribute.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that be believes both, has thought but little of either.

...And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I have furnished myself with a Bible and Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts than they deserved.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that  -- Thomas Paine understands it not.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Wer seine eigene Freiheit sichern will, muss selbst seinen Feind vor Unterdrckung schtzen.
  -- Thomas Paine
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It is by tracing things to their origin, that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings
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Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forceably to combat and expel prejudice, as the Revolution of America, and the Alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence already extends as well to the old world as the new. Our style and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution, more extraordinary than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used.
  -- Thomas Paine, A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happinesspositively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist of doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
  -- Thomas Paine
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It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and, in this case, it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How, then, is it that those people pretend to reject reason?
  -- Thomas Paine
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It is not because the right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a Spaniel.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.

As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The connection between vice and meanness is a fit subject for satire, but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible power of a diamond.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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 -- Thomas Paine (1737  1809) published Common Sense in January 1776.  Just two years before publishing his influential pamphlet, Paine emigrated from England to America in 1774.  The pamphlet was hugely influential in swaying masses of colonists to join the cause for revolution.  In the pamphlets easy-to-understand prose, Paine articulates why the colonists should break from British rule.  Paines argument is simple: the time for independence from British rule is now.  He argues for a complete separation from England.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it
  -- Thomas Paine
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But the fraud being once established, could not afterward be explained, for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and whenever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty. It
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is a matter worthy of observation, that the more a country is peopled, the smaller their armies are. In military numbers, the ancients far exceeded the moderns: and the reason is evident, for trade being the consequence of population, men become too much absorbed thereby to attend to any thing else. Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence. And history sufficiently informs us, that the bravest achievements were always accomplished in the non age of a nation.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? And yet that thought when produced, as i know produce the thought that i am writing, is capable of becoming inmortal, and is the only production of man that has that capacity.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set on foot for the promotion of idolatry. The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian world hath improved on the plan, by doing the same to their living ones. How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labor to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for the injustice, that were a workman to receive an increase of wages daily he would not save it against old age, nor be much better for it in the interim.
  -- Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice Opposed to Agrarian Law, and to Agrarian Monopoly; Being a Plan for Meliorating the Condition of Man
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A government or an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear, and consequently has nothing to conceal;
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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Mutluluktan mahrum ettiimiz bir topluluktan mutluluk beklemek imkanszdr.
  -- Thomas Paine
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nsan, Tanr'y akl yrtme yoluyla kefedebilir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings
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We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst the various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught, and men have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of disgust, than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the most visible falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no pretensions to.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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monarchy in every instance is the Popery of government.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Her insan kendisini yaratann kendisi olmadnn bir kantdr; ne babas, ne dedesi ne de atalar kendilerini yaratmlardr; ne aa, ne bitki ne de hayvanlar kendi kendilerini yaratmtr; tm bu kantlara bakarak sonsuzlukta var olan ilk nedene, doann bildiimiz maddi varlktan tmyle farkl olduuna ve tm varlklar yaratan bir gce inanma kanlmaz olmaktadr; insanlar bu ilk nedene Tanr demektedir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The union of America is the foundation-stone of her independence; the rock on which it is built; and is something so sacred in her constitution, that we ought to watch every word we speak, and every thought we think, that we injure it not, even by mistake.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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While the characters of men are forming, as is always the case in revolutions, there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to misinterpret each other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different views, and with the hope of its producing very different consequences.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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(Always remembering, that our strength is continental, not provincial:)
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Bize ikinci elden yazl veya szl olarak iletilen dnce ve ifadelerin bir vahiy olduunu ileri srmek elikidir. Vahiy tanm gerei ilk ilikiyle snrldr. Bundan sonras bu kiinin kendisine vahiy gnderildiini ileri srmesinden baka bir ey deildir. Bu kii kendisini inanmakla ykml grebilir, ama benim onun gibi inanma zorunluluum yoktur, nk bu vahiy bana gnderilmemitir ve benden bu vahyin kendisine gnderildiini iddia edenin szne inanmam istenmektedir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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for that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Tanr'nn ne olduunu bilmek istiyor muyuz? Bunu herhangi bir insann yazabilecei yazl kitaplarda arama, ama Yaratl'n imzasnda ara.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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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.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas. It
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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For what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say  thou knowest not so well as I.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe afforded. CHAPTER
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
  -- Thomas Paine
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You were not contented while you had her, and to weep for her now is childish.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference. The evidence I have produced, and shall still produce in the course of this work, to prove that the Bible is without authority, will, whilst it wounds the stubbornness of a priest, relieve and tranquilize the minds of millions: it will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty which priest-craft and the Bible had infused into their minds, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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absurdity
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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   ,    ,     -.
  -- Thomas Paine
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 -       ,    ,     .
  -- Thomas Paine
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pamphleteer
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Whatever is the cause of taxes to a Nation, becomes also the means of revenue to Government. Every war terminates with an addition of taxes, and consequently with an addition of revenue, and in any event of war, in the manner they are now commenced and concluded, the power and interest of Governments are increased. War, therefore, from its productiveness, as it easily furnishes the pretense of necessity for taxes and appointments to places and offices, becomes a principal part of the system of old governments; and 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. The frivolous matters upon which war is made, show the disposition and avidity of Governments to uphold the system of war, and betray the motives upon which they act.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate na individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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Society
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Liberty and Property are words expressing all those of our possessions which are not of an intellectual nature. There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe-such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property-the invention of men. In the latter, equality is impossible; for to distribute it equally it would be necessary that all should have contributed in the same proportion, which can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual would hold on to his own property, as his right share. Equality of natural property is the subject of this little essay. Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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The right of voting for persons charged with the execution of the laws that govern society is inherent in the word liberty, and constitutes the equality of personal rights. But even if that right (of voting) were inherent in property, which I deny, the right of suffrage would still belong to all equally, because, as I have said, all individuals have legitimate birthrights in a certain species of property. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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SOME WRITERS HAVE SO CONFOUNDED society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead of 'to die,' the only real suffering he could have endured would have been 'to live.' His existence here was a state of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his original country was to die.  In fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth, and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed to something better.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I will conclude this work with stating in what light religion appears to me.
If we suppose a large family of children, who, on any particular day, or particular circumstance, made it a custom to present to their parents some token of their affection and gratitude, each of them would make a different offering, and most probably in a different manner. Some would pay their congratulations in themes of verse and prose, by some little devices, as their genius dictated, or according to what they thought would please; and, perhaps, the least of all, not able to do any of those things, would ramble into the garden, or the field, and gather what it thought the prettiest flower it could find, though, perhaps, it might be but a simple weed. The parent would be more gratified by such a variety, than if the whole of them had acted on a concerted plan, and each had made exactly the same offering. This would have the cold appearance of contrivance, or the harsh one of control. But of all unwelcome things, nothing could more afflict the parent than to know, that the whole of them had afterwards gotten together by the ears, boys and girls, fighting, scratching, reviling, and abusing each other about which was the best or the worst present.
Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable? For my own part, I am fully satisfied that what I am now doing, with an endeavour to conciliate mankind, to render their condition happy, to unite nations that have hitherto been enemies, and to extirpate the horrid practice of war, and break the chains of slavery and oppression is acceptable in his sight, and being the best service I can perform, I act it cheerfully.
I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree
As to what are called national religions, we may, with as much propriety, talk of national Gods. It is either political craft or the remains of the Pagan system, when every nation had its separate and particular deity
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all...
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Howe's first object is, partly by threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their peace, "a peace which passeth all understanding" indeed! A peace which would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things! Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is what some Tories would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to deliver up their arms, they would be exposed to the resentment of the back counties who would then have it in their power to chastise their defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up its arms, that state must be garrisoned by all Howe's army of Britons and Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up truth to your eyes.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected: if not, they will be despised; and with regard to those to whom no power is delegated, but who assume it, the rational world can know nothing of them.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief in God, that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations. This story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shews, as is already stated in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen Mythology.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon as, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy at the same time the evil which it has produced ,ought to be considered as one of the first objects of reformed legislation.

Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called civilization, has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested. On one side, the spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances; on the other, he is shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of which it has erected. The most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, sciences and manufactures. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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Later in 1776, Paine accompanied the Continental army in its retreat from New Jersey to Philadelphia.  During this time, Paine began a new series of pamphlets.  Eventually, these sixteen pamphlets became The American Crisis.  In them, Paine comments on the American war effort and urges the colonists to keep fighting.  This pamphlet, the first in the series, is perhaps the most famous.  The pamphlet was read to George Washingtons troops in December 1776.  Days later, these same troops crossed the Delaware River and attacked the British encampment in Trenton, New Jersey.  The pamphlet opens with a familiar line: These are the times that try mens souls.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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It is possible that a nation my be the carrier for the world, but she cannot be the merchant. She cannot be the seller and buyer of her own merchandise. The ability to buy must reside out of herself; and therefore, the prosperity of any commercial nation is regulated by the prosperity of the rest. If they are poor she cannot be rich, and her condition, be what it may, is an index of the height of the commercial tide in other nations.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason and Liberty: "Had we," said he, "a place to stand upon, we might raise the world."

The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, - and all it wants, - is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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It is always possible to go from the natural to the civilized state, but it is never possible to go from the civilized to the natural state. The reason is that man in a natural state, subsisting by hunting, requires ten times the quantity of land to range over to procure himself sustenance, than would support him in a civilized state, where the earth is cultivated. When, therefore, a country becomes populous by the additional aids of cultivation, art and science, there is a necessity of preserving things in that state; because without it there cannot be sustenance for more, perhaps, than a tenth part of its inhabitants. The thing, therefore, now to be done is to remedy the evils and preserve the benefits that have arisen to society by passing from the natural to that which is called the civilized state.

-Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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When the French Revolution broke out, it certainly afforded to Mr. Burke an opportunity of doing some good, had he been disposed to it; instead of which, no sooner did he see the old prejudices wearing away, than he immediately began sowing the seeds of a new inveteracy, as if he were afraid that England and France would cease to be enemies. That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine - Volume 2 (1779-1792): the Rights of Man
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There can be no such thing as a nation flourishing alone in commerce: she can only participate; and the destruction of it in any part must necessarily affect all. When, therefore, governments are at war, the attack is made upon a common stock of commerce, and the consequence is the same as if each had attacked his own.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.
  -- Thomas Paine, Age of Reason: The Definitive Edition
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It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.

But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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I have entitled this tract "Agrarian Justice" to distinguish it from "Agrarian Law." Nothing could be more unjust than agrarian law in a country improved by cultivation; for though every man, as an inhabitant of the earth, is a joint proprietor of it in its natural state, it does not follow that he is a joint proprietor of cultivated earth. The additional value made by cultivation, after the system was admitted, became the property of those who did it, or who inherited it from them, or who purchased it. It had originally no owner. While, therefore, I advocate the right, and interest myself in the hard case of all those who have been thrown out of their natural inheritance by the introduction of the system of landed property, I equally defend the right of the possessor to the part which is his.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood. Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government. Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity. It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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We now see all over Europe, and particularly in England, the curious phenomenon of a nation looking one way, and the government the other - the one forward and the other backward. If governments are to go on by precedent, while nations go on by improvement, they must at last come to a final separation; and the sooner and the more civilly they determine this point, the better.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Taking it then for granted that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms. Give to any man a million a year, and add thereto the power of creating and disposing of places, at the expense of a country, and the liberties of that country are no longer secure. What is called the splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites, living in luxurious indolence, out of the public taxes.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Character is much easier kept than recovered, and that man, if any such there be, who, from sinister views, or littleness of soul, lends unseen his hand to injure it, contrives a wound it will never be in his power to heal.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Government is nothing more than a national association; and the object of this association is the good of all, as well individually as collectively. Every man wishes to pursue his occupation, and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are anwered.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government. It would seem, by the exterior appearance of such countries, that all was happiness; but there lies hidden from the eye of common observation, a mass of wretchedness, that has scarcely any other chance, than to expire in poverty or infamy. Its entrance into life is marked with the presage of its fate; and until this is remedied, it is in vain to punish.

Civil government does not exist in executions; but in making such provision for the instruction of youth and the support of age, as to exclude, as much as possible, profligacy from the one and despair from the other. Instead of this, the resources of a country are lavished upon kings, upon courts, upon hirelings, impostors and prostitutes; and even the poor themselves, with all their wants upon them, are compelled to support the fraud that oppresses them.

Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor? The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their condition. Bred up without morals, and cast upon the world without a prospect, they are exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity. The millions that are superfluously wasted upon governments are more than sufficient to reform those evils, and to benefit the condition of every man in a nation, not included within the purlieus of a court. This I hope to make appear in the progress of this work.

It is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune. In taking up this subject I seek no recompense - I fear no consequence. Fortified with that proud integrity, that disdains to triumph or to yield, I will advocate the Rights of Man.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things. When
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can determine between you.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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The setters up, therefore, and the advocates of the Christian system of faith, could not but foresee that the continually progressive knowledge that man would gain by the aid of science, of the power and wisdom of God, manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation, would militate against, and call into question, the truth of their system of faith; and therefore it became necessary to their project, and this they effected by restricting the idea of learning to the dead study of dead languages.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Propria mea minte este biserica mea.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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Necredinta nu consta in a crede sau in a nu crede, ci in faptul de a marturisi credinta in ceea ce nu crezi.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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Nimeni nu va nega sau nu va pune in discutie puterea Atotputernicului de a infaptui, daca doreste, o astfel de comunicare. Dar admitand, de dragul argumentului, ca unei persoane i s-a revelat ceva, fara sa i se reveleze vreunei alteia, atunci aceea este revelatie numai pentru acea persoana. Cand ii spune despre ea unei a doua persoane, iar a doua unei a treia, iar a treia unei a patra si asa mai departe, inceteaza sa mai fie revelatie pentru toate acele persoane. Este revelatie doar pentru prima persoana, iar pentru toate celelalte este un zvon, nefiind astfel obligate sa o creada.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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But, as, when any of the prouder passions are hurt, it is much better philosophy to let a man slip into a good temper than to attack him in a bad one
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Fapt este ca termenul profet, caruia epocile ulterioare i-au atribuit un nou sens, era cuvantul biblic penru poet, iar cuvantul a profeti insemna arta de a face poezie. Insemna, de asemenea, arta de a interpreta poezie dupa melodia oricarui instrument muzical.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The intimacy which is contracted in infancy, and the friendship which is formed in misfortune, are, of all others, the most lasting and unalterable.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Schimbarea progresiva neintrerupta la care este supus intelesul cuvintelor, lipsa unui limbaj universal, care face ca traducerea sa fie necesara, erorile carora traducrile le sunt supuse, greselile copistilor si tipografilor, alaturi de posibilitatea denaturarii voite sunt in ele insele dovezi ca limbajul omenesc, fie ca este vorbit sau tiparit, nu poate fi vehiculul Cuvantului lui Dumnezeu. [...] Cuvantul lui Dumnezeu este creatia, si prin cuvantul acesta, pe care niciun om nu il poate fabrica sau denatura  Dumnezeu ii vorbeste in mod universal omului.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Daca datorez bani cuiva si nu ii pot plati, iar acela ameninta ca ma arunca in inchisoare, datoria mea poate fi luata asupra sa de altcineva si o poate plati in locul meu. Dar daca am savarsit o infractiune, se schimba toate circumstantele cazului: dreptatea morala nu-l poate socoti vinovata pe cel nevinovat chiar daca cel nevinovat s-ar oferi pe sine. A presupune ca o astfel de actiune este un lucru drept inseamna a distruge principiul existentei sale, care este insasi dreptatea.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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Make government what it ought to be, and it will support itself.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Gerek din bilimsel bilgimizin kaynadr; bu bilgiden de tm sanatlar tremitir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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but from the errors of other nations let us learn wisdom, and lay hold of the present opportunityto begin government at the right end.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensible duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Ceea ce acum poarta numele de filosofie naturala, cuprinzand intregul cerc al stiintei, unde astronomia ocupa pozitia principala, reprezinta studiul lucrarii lui Dumnezeu si al puterii si intelepciunii lui Dumnezeu din lucrarea Sa, aceasta fiind adevarata teologie. [...] Cat despre teologia studiata acum in locul acesteia, este vorba despre studiul opiniilor si inchipuirilor omenesti despre Dumnezeu.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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S-ar putea spune ca, daca va avea loc o astfel de revolutie a sistemului religios, fiecare predicator va trebui sa fie un filosof : cu certitudine  iar fiecare casa de rugaciune va trebuie sa fie o scoala de stiinte.
  -- Thomas Paine, Epoca raiunii
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The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries. The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into man. The enormous expense of governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair. Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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I choose my life to this free. I choose my life to be this way
  -- Thomas Paine
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The rights of men in society, are neither devisable or transferable, nor annihilable, but are descendable only, and it is not in the power of any generation to intercept finally, and cut off the descent. If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free. Wrongs cannot have a legal descent.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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U zult me toch willen nageven dat ik altijd sterk heb benadrukt dat elk mens het recht heeft op een eigen mening, hoezeer die mening ook van de mijne afwijkt. Hij die een ander dit recht ontzegt, maakt zichzelf tot slaaf van zijn huidige mening, omdat hij zichzelf dan het recht ontneemt deze te veranderen.
  -- Thomas Paine
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That advice should be taken wherever example has failed, or precept be regarded where warning is ridiculed, is like a picture of hope resting on despair; but when time shall stamp with universal currency the facts you have long encountered with a laugh, and the irresistible evidence of accumulated losses, like the handwriting on the wall, shall ad terror to distress, you will then, in a conflict of suffering, learn to sympathize with others by feeling for yourselves.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Every person of learning is finally his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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When taxes are proposed, the country is amused by the plausible language of taxing luxuries. One thing is called a luxury at one time, and something else at another; but the real luxury does not consist in the article, but in the means of procuring it, and this is always kept out of sight.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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It is attributed to Henry IV of France, a man of enlarged and benevolent heart, that he proposed, about the year 1610, a plan for abolishing war in Europe. The plan consisted in constituting an European Congress, or as the French authors style it, a Pacific republic; by appointing delegates from the several nations who were to act as a court of arbitration in any disputes that might arise between nation and nation.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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But there is another and greater distinction, for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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What is this metaphor called a crown, or rather what is monarchy? . . . It appears to be something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered as an absurdity; and in France it has so far declined, that the goodness of the man, and the respect for his personal character, are the only things that preserve the appearance of its existence.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Tm dini kurumlar, vahiy veya Tanr kelam adn verdikleri kutsal kitaplara sahiptir. Yahudiler, Tanr Kelamlar'nn Musa'ya Tanr tarafndan yz yze iletildiini; Hristiyanlar kendi Tanr Kelamlar'nn kutsal esinlenme yoluyla; Mslmanlar da Tanr Kelamlar'nn (Kuran) cennetten gelen bir melek tarafndan indirildiini sylemektedirler. Tm bu farkl dini kurumlar birbirlerini imanszlkla sulamaktadrlar, bense bunlarn hibirine inanmyorum.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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He next made arrangements to patent his bridge, and to construct at Rotherham the large model of it exhibited on Paddington Green, London.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine - Volume 2 (1779-1792): the Rights of Man
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for this continent would never suffer itself to be drained of inhabitants, to support the British arms in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every one is left to judge of its own religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other's religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong. but with respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants, and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a center.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if she do not conquer herself by DELAY and TIMIDITY.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone.  Editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. We
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Evrensel inanlar yetkin bir biimde meydan okuyan antik kitaplardan biri Eukleides'in Geometri'nin Temelleri kitabdr; kitap, yazarndan bamsz olarak zaman, mekn ve koullara bal her eyin aka tanmlanabileceinin bizzat kantdr. Kitapta yer alan konularn tm gnmzde de gncelliini korumaktadr, bu kitap baka biri tarafndan yazlmas ya da yazarnn bilinmemesi durumunda bile gncelliini srdrecekti.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Of all the innocent passions which actuate the human mind there is none more universally prevalent than curiosity. It reaches all mankind, and in matters which concern us, or concern us not, it alike provokes in us a desire to know them.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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HOW CAME THE KING BY A POWER WHICH THE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO TRUST, AND ALWAYS OBLIGED TO CHECK? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, WHICH NEEDS CHECKING, be from God; yet the provision, which the constitution makes, supposes such a power to exist.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war, abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or wrong. When nothing can be lost by a war, but what must be lost without it, war is then the policy of that country; and such was the situation of America at the commencement of hostilities: but when no security can be gained by a war, but what may be accomplished by a peace, the case becomes reversed.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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A good opinion of ourselves is exceedingly necessary in private life, but absolutely necessary in public life, and of the utmost importance in supporting national character.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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if they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government by king, lords and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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One of the great advantages of the American Revolution has been, that it led to a discovery of the principles, and laid open the imposition, of governments. All the revolutions till then had been worked within the atmosphere of a court, and never on the grand floor of a nation. The parties were always of the class of courtiers; and whatever was their rage for reformation, they carefully preserved the fraud of the profession.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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There is something in a war carried on by invasion which makes it differ in circumstances from any other mode of war, because he who conducts it cannot tell whether the ground he gains be for him, or against him, when her first obtains it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Prosecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly-marked feature of all law-religious, or religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When the tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former follies.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Peygamberlik de Mucize gibidir. Gerek bile olsa amaca hizmet etmemektedir. Peygamberliini ilan eden kiinin yalan syleyip sylemedii, grdn syledii eylerin vahiy mi yoksa uydurma m olduu anlalamaz; peygamberlik olarak adlandrd ya da peygamberlik ad altnda ileri srd ey gerekleirse ya da saysz gnlk olay arasnda onun iddia ettii eylerden biri doru karsa, bunu nceden bilip bilmedii, tahmin edip etmedii, rastlant olup olmad da anlalamaz. Dolaysyla peygamber yararsz ve gereksiz bir karakterdir; bu konuda dayatmalarla karlamamann en emin yolu bu tr dncelere dn vermemektir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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As war is the system of government on the old construction, the animosity which nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing more than what the policy of their governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. 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 hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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a government which cannot preserve the peace, is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another country? Or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to them, or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any man's estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence? -Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is the Pharo table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable. With
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Peygamberlik profesyonel bir yalanclktr. Neredeyse dier tm vakalarda basit bir varsaymn bile insanlarn safl sayesinde bir yalana dntn ve bu yalann da sonunda gerek olarak anlatldn grmek zor deildir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason and Other Works
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Fakat mutluluk iin insann zihinsel olarak kendine sadakat gstermesi gereklidir. manszlk sadece inan veya inanszlktan ibaret deildir; inanmad eye inanm gibi grnmeyi de kapsar.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is a duty incumbent on every true deist, that he vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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In the tremendous breaking forth of a whole people, in which all degrees, tempers and characters are confounded, delivering themselves, by a miracle of exertion, from the destruction mediated against them, is it to be expected that nothing will happen? When men are sore with the sense of oppressions, and menaced with the prospects of new ones, is the calmness of philosophy or the palsy of insensibility to be looked for?
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as placemen, pensioners, lords of the bedchamber, lords of the kitchen, lords of the necessary-house, and the lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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When the tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former follies. A mind disarmed of its rage feels no pleasure in contemplating a frantic quarrel. Sickness of thought, the sure consequence of conduct like yours, leaves no ability for enjoyment, no relish for resentment; and though, like a man in a fit, you feel not the injury of the struggle, nor distinguish between strength and disease, the weakness will nevertheless be proportioned to the violence, and the sense of pain increase with the recovery.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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That there are men in all countries to whom a state of war is a mine of wealth, is a fact never to be doubted. characters like these naturally breed in the putrefaction of distempered times, and after fattening on the disease, they perish with it, or, impregnated with the stench, retreat into obscurity.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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 -- Thomas Paine wrote:It would be an error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all other sciences, and subjects, and philosophies on nature, as being our accomplishments only, they should be taught theologically, with reference to the being who is the author of them all: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the author of them all.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Mucizenin doann ileyiinden tamamen bamsz olduunu dnrsek, doann onu gerekletirmek iin kendi ileyiinin dna kmak zorunda kalacan da kabul etmemiz gerekir; bir mucize grdn syleyen biriyle karlatmzda, aklmza yant ok basit olan u soru gelir: Mucizenin gereklemesi iin doann ileyiinin dna kmas m, yoksa bunu grdn ileri srenin yalan sylemesi mi daha olasdr? Zamanmzda doann ileyiinin dna ktna tank olmadk, ama bu sre iinde milyonlarca yalan sylendiine inanmak iin ok iyi nedenlerimiz var; demek ki mucize grdn ileri sren birinin yalan sylememesi milyonda bir ihtimaldir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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in order that nothing may pass into a law but what is satisfactorily just, not less than three fifths of the Congress to be called a majority. He that will promote discord, under a government so equally formed as this, would have joined Lucifer in his revolt.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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I proceed to speak of three principal means that have been employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose [religion] upon mankind.

Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected
  -- Thomas Paine
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Hristiyan inan sistemi bana bir tr ateizm olarak grnmektedir; Tanr'nn bir tr dinsel inkr. Tanr'dan ok bir adama inanmayla kendini ifade etmektedir. Ana maddesi insana inanmak, yardmc maddesi olaanst bir varla inanmak olan bu bileim ateizme, alacakaranln karanla olduu kadar yakndr. nsan ile Yaratcs arasna, dnya ile gne arasna giren ay gibi, k geirmez bir varlk yerletirir ve bylece dinsel ya da dind bir k tutulmasna neden olur. Akl yrngesinin tm glgede kalmtr.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The difference between a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be nothing.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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A government of our own is our natural right: And when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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We have it in our power to begin the world all over again
  -- Thomas Paine
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Yaratlan her ey bu balamda bir gizemse, bu kelime karanln aydnln yerine kullanlamayaca gibi ahlaki gerek yerine kullanlamaz. nandmz Tanr, karanln ya da gizemin deil gerein Tanr'sdr. Gizem gerein kartdr. Gizem, gerei karanla iten, onu bozan, insann yaratt bir sistir. Gerek hibir zaman gizemle sarmalanamaz; eer sarmalanrsa bu gerein deil kartnn suudur.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most inconsistent. For, in the first place, whenever recourse is had to show, for the purpose of procuring that belief (for a miracle, under any idea of the word, is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And, in the second place, it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to amuse and make the people stare and wonder.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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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.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Government by Monks, who knew nothing of the world beyond the walls of a Convent, is as consistent as government by Kings.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth
 Thomas paine
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if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not a God of mystery or obscurity. 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.

Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of a moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? And yet that thought, when produced, as I now produce the thought that I am writing, is capable of becoming inmortal, and is the only production of man that has that capacity.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD:
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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But everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and derogatory to the human character should lead to other reflections than those of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some claim to our consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of mankind as are distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob, are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we ask ourselves this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as an unavoidable consequence, out of the ill construction of all old governments in Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the background of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a revolution, those men are rather the followers of the camp than of the standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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It frequently happens that in proportion as we are taught to dislike persons and countries, not knowing why, we feel an ardor of esteem upon the removal of the mistake: it seems as if something was to be made amends for, and we eagerly give in to every office of friendship, to atone for the injury of the error. But, perhaps, there is something in the extent of countries, which, among the generality of people, insensibly communicates extension of the mind. The soul of an islander, in its native state, seems bounded by the foggy confines of the water's edge, and all beyond affords to him matters only for profit or curiosity, not for friendship. His island is to him his world, and fixed to that, his everything centers in it; while those who are inhabitants of a continent, by casting their eye over a larger field, take in likewise a larger intellectual circuit, and thus approaching nearer to an acquaintance with the universe, their atmosphere of thought is extended, and their liberality fills a wider space. In short, our minds seem to be measured by countries when we are men, as they are by places when we are children, and until something happens to disentangle us from the prejudice, we serve under it without perceiving it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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according to Matthew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain by his own appointment, on the same day that he is said to have risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in Galilee,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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...out the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in n pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Had the cruel and murdering orders, with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend, whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Gnmzde var olan tm bilimsel bilgi bize ya Eski Yunanllardan ya da Eski Yunanca konuan topluluklardan gelmitir. Bu nedenle, baka uluslarn Yunanllarn sahip olduu bilgiyi edinebilmesi iin bu uluslardan baz kiilerin Yunanca renmesi ve Yunanca bilim ve felsefe kitaplarn bu uluslarn dillerine evirmesi gerekmiti.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable.
 thomas paine, The Age of Reason
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Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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Tek Tanr'ya inanrm, baka bir eye deil; bu yaamdan sonra da mutluluk olmasn umut ederim.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself thereto.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is the violence which is done and threatened to our persons; the destruction of our property by an armed force; the invasion of our country by fire and sword, which conscientiously qualifies the use of arms: And the instant, in which such a mode of defence became necessary, all subjection to Britain ought to have ceased; and the independancy of America, should have been considered, as dating its era from, and published by, THE FIRST MUSKET THAT WAS FIRED AGAINST HER.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itselfin all casesas the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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Her trl yanla kar en amansz silah Akl'dr.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world;-that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonourable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty;-that the only true religion is deism, by which I then meant and now mean the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues;-and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now-and so help me God.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Dukhoborcheskaya
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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There is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honor can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children, or metes out some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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All their wishes centred in one, which was, that the country would turn out and help them to drive the enemy back.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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The world is my country, mankind are my friends, to do good is my religion.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Yalandmzda mutlu olabilmek iin, yaam boyunca zihnimize elik edenlere kendimizi altrmamz gerekir, bylelikle her eyden sras geldiinde mutlu oluruz. Sadece zevk adam olan biri ileri yalarda acnacak duruma der; kle gibi alan da biraz daha iyi olsa bile ayn durumdadr. Doa felsefesi, matematik ve mekanik bilimleri insan dingin bir keyfe gtren daimi kaynaklardr ve rahiplerin kasvetli dogmalarna, bo inanlara ramen bu konularla uramak, gerek dinle uramaktr; bunlar insana Yaratc'y tanmay ve ona hayranlk duymay retir, zira yaratltaki bilim ilkeleri deimez ve ilahi bir kkene sahiptir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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the Jewish nation, immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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For with respect to those things which immediately concern the union, and for which the union was purposely established, and is intended to secure, each state is to the United States what each individual is to the state he lives in. And it is on this grand point, this movement upon one centre, that our existence as a nation, our happiness as a people, and our safety as individuals, depend.

It may happen that some state or other may be somewhat over or under rated, but this cannot be much. The experience which has been had upon the matter, has nearly ascertained their several abilities. But even in this case, it can only admit of an appeal to the United States, but cannot authorize any state to make the alteration itself, any more than our internal government can admit an individual to do so in the case of an act of assembly; for if one state can do it, then may another do the same, and the instant this is done the whole is undone.

Neither is it supposable that any single state can be a judge of all the comparative reasons which may influence the collective body in arranging the quotas of the continent. The circumstances of the several states are frequently varying, occasioned by the accidents of war and commerce, and it will often fall upon some to help others, rather beyond what their exact proportion at another time might be; but even this assistance is as naturally and politically included in the idea of a union as that of any particular assigned proportion; because we know not whose turn it may be next to want assistance, for which reason that state is the wisest which sets the best example.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Uydurma olmayan ve iinde zgn ilahiliin tm kantlarn barndran tek din saf ve basit deizmdir
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason and Other Works
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That in which every man is interested, is every man's duty to support. And any burden which falls equally on all men, and from which every man is to receive an equal benefit, is consistent with the most perfect ideas of liberty.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Let it then be heard, and let man learn to feel that the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity, and not on conquest.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers have been rejected with disdain; and only tended to convince us, that nothing flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy in Kings more than repeated petitioningand noting hath contributed more than that very measure to make the Kings of Europe absolute
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated...
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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My own mind is
my own church.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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nsanolunun Tanr adna ykledii tek anlam, ilk neden, tm eylerin nedeni olmasdr. lk nedenin ne olduunu anlamann kavranamaz lde g olmas ve ona inanmamann on kat kadar daha zor olmas nedeniyle insanolu inanma noktasna varr. Tanmnn tesinde uzayn sonsuz olduunu alglamak zordur; ama bir sonu olduunu dnebilmek daha da zordur. Zaman dediimiz sonsuzluu kavramak insan gcnn tesindedir; fakat zaman olmadnda bir zaman kavramn alglamak daha da zordur.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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we must suppose that people to have been an example to all the rest of the world of the purest piety and humanity, and not such a nation of ruffians and cut-throats as the ancient Jews were,  a people who, corrupted by and copying after such monsters and imposters as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others on the face of the known earth for barbarity and wickedness.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind; consequently, religion is one of those rights. The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it. But what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of society, and takes the arm of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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though he may be cruel, never can be brave. But,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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In whatever manner the separate parts of a constitution may be arranged, there is one general principle that distinguishes freedom from slavery, which is, that all hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery, and representative government is freedom.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Hij die zijn eigen vrijheid veilig wil stellen, moet zelfs zijn vijand tegen onderdrukking beschermen, want als hij die plicht schendt, schept hij een precedent dat op hemzelf terug zal slaan.
  -- Thomas Paine
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in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. All believe in a God, The things in which they disgrace are the redundancies annexed to that belief;
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Socrates poisoned, Aristides ostracized, Aristotle fleeing for his life, Jesus crucified, Paul beheaded, Peter crucified head downward, Savonarola martyred, Spinoza hunted, tracked and cursed, and an order issued that no man should speak to him not supply him food or shelter, Bruno burned, Galileo imprisoned, Huss, Wyclif, Latimer and Tyndale used for kindling - all this in the name of religion, institutional religion, the one thing that has caused more misery, heartaches, bloodshed, war, than all other causes combined.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Man, were he not corrupted by governments, is naturally the friend of man, and . . . human nature is not of itself vicious.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Wat wij te goedkoop verwerven, schatten we te laag in. Het is duurte die alles zijn waarde geeft.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Benjamin Franklin'i bilenler zihninin daima gen, karakterinin de daima dingin olduunu hatrlayacaktr; asla yalanmayan bilim, daima onun sevgilisi olmutur. Hibir zaman amasz kalmamtr; amasz kalrsak, hastanede lm bekleyen bir sakattan farkmz kalmaz.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged.

Secondly, That civil power properly considered as such is made up of the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his purpose, but when collected to a focus becomes competent to the Purpose of every one.

Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such a miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is,-Is it more probably that nature should go out of her course, or that man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those ofa good citizen; an open and resolute friend;anda virtuous supporter of theRIGHTSofMANKIND,and of theFREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES OF AMERICA.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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I would give worlds, if I had them, that the Age of Reason had never been published. Oh, god, save me; for I am at the edge of hell alone.
  -- Thomas Paine
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But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies; some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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If a house of legislation is to be composed of men of one class, for the purpose of protecting a distinct interest, all the other interests should have the same. The inequality, as well as the burthen of taxation, arises from admitting it in one case, and not in all. Had there been a house of farmers, there had been no game laws; or a house of merchants and manufacturers. the taxes had neither been so unequal nor so excessive. It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Those who live always in houses can find many ways to keep themselves warm, but it is a shame and a sin to suffer a soldier in the field to want a blanket while there is one in the country.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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But the Christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse  as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it. How
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
  -- Thomas Paine
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In casting our eyes over the world, it is extremely easy to distinguish the governments which have arisen out of society, or out of the social compact, from those which have not; but to place this in a clearer light than what single glance may afford, it will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen and on which they have been founded. They may be all comprehended under three heads.

First, Superstition.
Secondly, Power.
Thirdly, The common interest of society and the common rights of man.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and third of reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Hristiyan inancnn destekileri ya da taraftarlar inanmasa ya da kabul etmese de cehalet dnemi Hristiyanlk sistemiyle balamtr
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Moloch'tan modern Tanr iradesi anlayna kadar geen sre iinde ortaya kan bozulmalar ve eski mitolojilerdeki insan kurban edilmesinden yaratcya adanan Hristiyan kurbanlarna kadar tm uygulamalar vahiy dini ad verilen sistemi kabul etmekle ortaya kmtr. Tm bu ktlk ve dayatmalar engellemenin en etkili yolu, Yaratln kitabndaki mesajlardan bakasn kabul etmemek ve Yaratl Tanr'nn gemi ya da gelecekteki tek doru ve gerek kelam olarak kabul etmektir; bunun dnda Tanr Kelam olarak adlandrlan her ey uydurma ve dayatmadr.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason and Other Works
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Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being the only mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Hristiyan kilisesi ad verilen kuramn pagan mitolojisinin kuyruuna taklp yeerdiini gzlemlemek ilgi ekicidir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy. 
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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the greatest forces that can be brought into the field of revolutions, are reason and common interest. Where these can have the opportunity of acting, opposition dies with fear, or crumbles away by conviction.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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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 honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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nsanl sarsan en iren ktlkler, en korkun acmaszlklar, en byk sefaletler temelini vahiy ya da gkten indirilen din denilen bu olguda bulmaktadr. nsann yaratlndan bu yana yaylmasna allan yceliin niteliine kar en onursuz inan, ahlaka ve insann mutluluuna kar en kar en ykc ey bu oldu
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason and Other Works
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When a nation changes its opinion and habits of thinking, it is no longer to be governed as before; but it would not only be wrong, but bad policy, to attempt by force what ought to be accomplished by reason. Rebellion consists in forcibly opposing the general will of a nation, whether by a party or by a government. There ought, therefore, to be in every nation a method of occasionally ascertaining the state of public opinion with respect to government.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Though age will naturally exempt a person from personal service, it cannot exempt him from his share of the charge, because the men are raised for the defence of property and liberty jointly.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The poor, in all countries, are naturally both peaceable and grateful in all reforms in which their interest and happiness is included. It is only by neglecting and rejecting them that they become tumultuous.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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And I put it as a question to those, who make a study of mankind, whether REPRESENTATION AND ELECTION is not too great a power for one and the same body of men to possess? When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Governments, so far from being always the cause or means of order, are often the destruction of it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Nations, like individuals, who have long been enemies, without knowing each other, or knowing why, become better friends when they discover the errors and impositions under which they had acted.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The valor of a country may be learned by the bravery of its soldiery, and the general cast of its inhabitants, but confidence of success is best discovered by the active measures pursued by men of property; and when the spirit of enterprise becomes so universal as to act at once on all ranks of men, a war may then, and not till then, be styled truly proper.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Akl dediimiz yerde bir dnce olumasnn olaanst gzelliini kim tarif edebilir? Dnce olutuu zaman, u anda yazdm dnce gibi lmszlk kazanma yeteneine sahip olur, bu da insanolunun byle bir zellie sahip tek rndr.

Bronz ve mermer heykeller yok olabilir; bunlar taklit ederek yaplan heykeller, bir resmin kopyasnn aslyla ayn olmamas gibi, eskisinin ayn olmayacak, farkl bir iilikle yaplacaktr. Fakat bir dncenin binlerce kez yeniden yaynlanmas, bir aaca oyularak, bir taa kazlarak yazlmas onun her durumda ayn dnce olma niteliini deitirmez.
  -- Thomas Paine
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In every point of view in which those things called miracles can be placed and considered, the reality of them is improbable and their existence unnecessary. They would not, as before observed, answer any useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral, without any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for itself. Miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this it requires a transfer of faith from God to man to believe a miracle upon man's report. Instead, therefore, of admitting the recitals of miracles as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable to seek the aid that truth rejects.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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nothing flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy in Kings more than repeated petitioning
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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With how much more glory, and advantage to itself, does a nation act, when it exerts its powers to rescue the world from bondage, and to create itself friends, than when it employs those powers to increase ruin, desolation, and misery.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Natural rights are those which 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 natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is time that nations should be rational, and not be governed like animals, for the pleasure of their riders. To read the history of kings, a man would be almost inclined to suppose that government consisted in stag-hunting, and that every nation paid a million a-year to a huntsman. Man ought to have pride, or shame enough to blush at being thus imposed upon, and when he feels his proper character he will. Upon all subjects of this nature, there is often passing in the mind, a train of ideas he has not yet accustomed himself to encourage and communicate. Restrained by something that puts on the character of prudence, he acts the hypocrite upon himself as well as to others. It is, however, curious to observe how soon this spell can be dissolved. A single expression, boldly conceived and uttered, will sometimes put a whole company into their proper feelings: and whole nations are acted on in the same manner.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The laws of every country must be analogous to some common principle.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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In contemplating revolutions, it is easy to perceive that they may arise from two distinct causes; the one, to avoid or get rid of some great calamity; the other, to obtain some great and positive good; and the two may be distinguished by the names of active and passive revolutions. In those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by revenge. But in those which proceed from the latter, the heart, rather animated than agitated, enters serenely upon the subject. Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence. When men unite in agreeing that a thing is good, could it be obtained, such for instance as relief from a burden of taxes and the extinction of corruption, the object is more than half accomplished. What they approve as the end, they will promote in the means.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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What Athens was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly.
  -- Thomas Paine
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As mystery and miracles took charge of the past and present, prophesy took charge of the future and rounded the tenses of faith.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honour. It is not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labour and poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not in that mass.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy Creator, make use of the reason he endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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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 honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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...the so much boasted constitution of England...is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise...
  -- Thomas Paine
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In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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virtue, as I have already remarked, is not hereditary, neither is it perpetual.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There may be many systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd. It
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies, some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon it's goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated
  -- Thomas Paine
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A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting the government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organized, the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the complete organisation of a civil government, and the principles which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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if all with doubts about the factual basis of their religion will but commit to their resolution through direct and unfettered inquiry, our country - and with it the world - will see a rebirth of Liberty,
  -- Thomas Paine,  -- Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason - Part Three
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In the progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I may so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that produce it, and journey on in search of new matter and new refinements: but as it is pleasant and sometimes useful to look back, even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and windings through which we have passed, so we may likewise derive many advantages by halting a while in our political career, and taking a review of the wondrous complicated labyrinth of little more than yesterday.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer, and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organized, the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of Parliaments, or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive part of the government shall have; and in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which so many Lo heres! and Lo theres! have been spread about the world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The only idea man can affix to the name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensible and difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Yalan sylemek kolaydr ama devam ettirmek zordur.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason and Other Works
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Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of a God. It...has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The English government is one of those which arose out of a conquest, and not out of society, and consequently it arose over the people; and though it has been much modified from the opportunity of circumstances since the time of William the Conqueror, the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a constitution.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Men do not change from enemies to friends by the alteration of a name:
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communicationafter this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A substantial good drawn from a real evil, is of the same benefit to society as if drawn from a virtue; and where men have not public spirit to render themselves serviceable, it ought to be the study of government to draw the best use possible from their vices. When the governing passion of any man, or set of men, is once known, the method of managing them is easy; for even misers, whom no public virtue can impress, would become generous, could a heavy tax be laid upon covetousness.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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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. It neither abates of its vigor nor changes its object; and the reason why it does not is founded in the nature of things, for wealth has not a rival where avarice is a ruling passion. One beauty may excel another, and extinguish from the mind of man the pictured remembrance of a former one: but wealth is the phoenix of avarice, and therefore it cannot seek a new object, because there is not another in the world.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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He writes neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but in the fawning character of that creature known in all countries, and a friend to none - a courtier. Whether it be the Court of Versailles, or the Court of St. James, or Carlton-House, or the Court in expectation, signifies not; for the caterpillar principle of all Courts and Courtiers are alike. They form a common policy throughout Europe, detached and separate from the interest of Nations: and while they appear to quarrel, they agree to plunder. Nothing can be more terrible to a Court or Cartier than the Revolution of France. That which is a blessing to Nations is bitterness to them: and as their existence depends on the duplicity of a country, they tremble at the approach of principles, and dread the precedent that threatens their overthrow.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Tm kinat dzenleyen ve yneten ilkeler gibi her bilimin de sabit ve deitirilemez ilkeleri vardr. nsan bu ilkeleri yapamaz ancak onlar kefedebilir.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason and Other Works
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Were a man to be totally deprived of memory, he would be incapable of forming any just opinion; everything about him would seem a chaos: he would have even his own history to ask from every one; and by not knowing how the world went in his absence, he would be at a loss to know how it ought to go on when he recovered, or rather, returned to it again. In like manner, though in a less degree, a too great inattention to past occurrences retards and bewilders our judgment in everything; while, on the contrary, by comparing what is past with what is present, we frequently hit on the true character of both, and become wise with very little trouble.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority, perfect equality affords no temptation.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and unabateable. It admits, neither of peace, truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare eternal and therefore is natural. But man with man cannot arrange in the same opposition. Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally created. They become friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the cast of interest inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute them the natural enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of beings so. Even wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not nature but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the accuser.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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It may be considered as an honour to the animal faculties of man to obtain redress by courage and danger, but it is far greater honour to the rational faculties to accomplish the same object by reason, accommodation, and general consent.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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To be happy in old age it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age; and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Separated from the rest of Europe, she has contracted an unsocial habit of manners, and imagines in others the jealousy she creates in herself. never long satisfied with peace, she supposes the discontent universal, and buoyed up with her own importance, conceives herself the only object pointed at.
The expression has been often used, and always with a fraudulent design; for when the idea of a natural enemy is conceived, it prevents all other inquiries and the real cause of the quarrel is hidden in the universality of the conceit. Men start at the notion of a natural enemy, and ask no other question. The cry obtains credit like the alarm of a mad dog, and is one of those kind of tricks, which, by operating on the common passions, secures their interest through their folly.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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The right of war and peace is in the nation. where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the expense?
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, 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.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament, imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in the manner in which an English Parliament is constructed it is like a man being both mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of misapplication of trust it is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the comedy of errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the ministerial party nor the opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse is the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country people call Ride and tieyou ride a little way, and then I. [6] They order these things better in France.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."  -- Thomas Paine-The Age of Reason
  -- Thomas Paine
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we are never in a proper condition of doing justice to others, while we continue under the influence of some leading partiality, so neither are we capable of doing it to ourselves while we remain fettered by any obstinate prejudice. And
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go back to nature for information.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.
  -- Thomas Paine
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It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing 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. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of governments ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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In reviewing the history of the English government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Those who knew Benjaman Franklin will recollect, that his mind was ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for death.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt,
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

The two modes of the Government which prevail in the world, are, First, Government by election and representation: Secondly, Government by hereditary succession. The former is generally known by the name of republic; the latter by that of monarchy and aristocracy.

Those two distinct and opposite forms erect themselves on the two distinct and opposite bases of Reason and Ignorance. - As the exercise of Government requires talents and abilities, and as talents and abilities cannot have hereditary descent, it is evident that hereditary succession requires a belief from man to which his reason cannot subscribe, and which can only be established upon his ignorance; and the more ignorant any country is, the better it is fitted for this species of Government.

On the contrary, Government, in a well-constituted republic, requires no belief from man beyond what his reason can give. He sees the rationale of the whole system, its origin and its operation; and as it is best supported when best understood, the human faculties act with boldness, and acquire, under this form of government, a gigantic manliness.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Statues of brass and marble will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues, nor the same workmanship, any more than the copy of a picture is the same picture. But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind, carve it in wood, or engrave it on stone, the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case. It has a capacity of unimpaired existence, unaffected by change of matter, and is essentially distinct, and of a nature different from every thing else that we know of, or can conceive. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is the self-same thing as consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected with, and as the thought is of the printing or writing it first appeared in.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world. The Continent hath, at this time, the largest body of armed and disciplined men of any power under Heaven;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion; whenever it fails it never recovers, but either breaks like iron or crumbles sulkily away like a fractured arch. Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest; their suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Toho, co snadno zskme, si pli nevme. Pouze to, o co musme usilovat, m skutenou hodnotu.
  -- Thomas Paine
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THUS much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The new Testament! that is, the new Will, as if there could be two wills of the Creator.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of al is pleased with variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable?
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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In despotic governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in which they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more permanent promptitude.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Credulity is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain the truth. We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It was originally a military order for the purpose of supporting military government (for such were all governments founded in conquest); and to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose for which it was established, all the younger branches of those families were disinherited and the law of primogenitureship set up. The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law. It is the law against every other law of nature, and nature herself calls for its destruction. Establish family justice, and aristocracy falls. By the aristocratic law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children five are exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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If the colony continues increasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of the representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number; and that the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; because as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflexion of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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To unite the sinews of commerce and defence is sound policy; for when our strength and our riches, play into each other's hand, we need fear no external enemy.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be revelation; but it is not and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Resolution is our inherent character, and courage hath never yet forsaken us. Wherefore, what is it that we want? Why is it that we hesitate?
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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There are stages in the business of serious life in which to assume is cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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It is not because right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the rights of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of conducting it after it is declared.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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for in proportion as the enemy despair of conquest, they will be trying the arts of seduction and the force of fear by all the mischiefs which they can inflict. But in war we may be certain of these two things, viz. that cruelty in an enemy, and motions made with more than usual parade, are always signs of weakness. he that can conquer, finds his mind too free and pleasant to be brutish; and he that intends to conquer, never makes too much show of his strength.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Every government that does not act on the principle of a Republic, or in other words, that does not make the res-publica its whole and sole object, is not a good government. Republican government is no other than government established and conducted for the interest of the public, as well individually as collectively. It is not necessarily connected with any particular form, but it most naturally associates with the representative form, as being best calculated to secure the end for which a nation is at the expense of supporting it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensible duty of all government, to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith. Let a man throw aside that narrowness of soul, that selfishness of principle, which the niggards of all professions are so unwilling to part with, and he will be at once delivered of his fears on that head. Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society. For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty, that there should be diversity of religious opinions among us: It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness. Were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and on this liberal principle, I look on the various denominations among us, to be like children of the same family, differing only, in what is called, their Christian names.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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When a man pays a tax, he knows that the public necessity requires it, and therefore feels a pride in discharging his duty; but a fine seems an atonement for neglect of duty, and of consequence is paid with discredit, and frequently levied with severity.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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But though, speaking for myself, I thus admit the possibility of revelation, I totally disbelieve that the Almighty ever did communicate any thing to man, by any mode of speech, in any language, or by any kind of vision, or appearance, or by any means which our senses are capable of receiving, otherwise than by the universal display of himself in the works of the creation, and by that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to good ones.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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There are certain circumstances, which, at the time of their happening, are a kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be followed by its answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed by their events, and those events are always the true solution. A considerable space of time may lapse between, and unless we continue our observations from the one to the other, the harmony of them will pass away unnoticed: but the misfortune is, that partly from the pressing necessity of some instant things, and partly from the impatience of our own tempers, we are frequently in such a hurry to make out the meaning of everything as fast as it happens, that we thereby never truly understand it; and not only start new difficulties to ourselves by so doing, but, as it were, embarrass Providence in her good designs.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him from it. Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of religion, have been fabricated and set up.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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the person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom they call holy, on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for myself, I hesitate not to believe,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When men are spoken of as kings and subjects, or when Government is mentioned under the distinct and combined heads of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, what is it that reasoning man is to understand by the terms? If there really existed in the world two or more distinct and separate elements of human power, we should then see the several origins to which those terms would descriptively apply; but as there is but one species of man, there can be but one element of human power; and that element is man himself. Monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, are but creatures of imagination; and a thousand such may be contrived as well as three.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Misfortune and experience are lost upon mankind, when they produce neither reflection nor reformation. Evils, like poisons, have their uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach.
  -- Thomas Paine
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All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant? It proceeds from the connection which Mr. Burke recommends. By engendering the church with the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called the church established by law. It is a stranger, even from its birth, to any parent mother, on whom it is begotten, and whom in time it kicks out and destroys.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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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 which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that the human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the word of God. The word of God exists in something else.
  -- Thomas Paine
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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 which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.-The Word of God exists in something else.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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That which is called government, or rather that which we ought to conceive government to be, is no more than some common center in which all the parts of society unite. This cannot be accomplished by any method so conducive to the various interests of the community, as by the representative system. It concentrates the knowledge necessary to the interest of the parts, and of the whole. It places government in a state of constant maturity. it is, as has already been observed, never young, never old. It is subject neither to nonage, nor dotage. It is never in the cradle, nor on crutches. It admits not of a separation between knowledge and power, and is superior, as government always ought to be, to all the accidents of individual man, and is therefore superior to what is called monarchy.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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a long Habit of not thinking a Thingwrong,gives it a superficial appearance of beingright,and
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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This sort of absurd subterfuge, and this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided, it is weakened.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the event of a few months.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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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 expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The House of Commons did not originate as a matter of right in the people to delegate or elect, but as a grant or boon.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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When we survey the wretched conditions of man, under the monarchical and hereditary systems of Government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of Governments is necessary.

What is government more than the management of the affairs of a Nation? It is not, and from its nature cannot be, the property of any particular man or family, but of the whole community, at whose expense it is supported; and though by force and contrivance it has been usurped into an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the Nation only, and not to any individual; and a Nation has at all times an inherent indefeasible right to abolish any form of Government it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as accords with its interest, disposition and happiness. the romantic and barbarous distinction of men into Kings and subjects, though it may suit the condition of courtiers, cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by the principle upon which Governments are now founded. Every citizen is a member of the Sovereignty, and, as such, can acknowledge no personal subjection; and his obedience can be only to the laws.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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There never yet was any truth or principle so irresistibly obvious, that all men believed it at once.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Common Sense and Other Political Writings
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Were government a mere manufacture or article of commerce, immaterial by whom it should be made or sold, we might as well employ her as another, but when we consider it as the fountain from whence the general manners and morality of a country take their rise, that the persons entrusted with the execution thereof are by their serious example an authority to support these principles, how abominably absurd is the idea of being hereafter governed by a set of men who have been guilty of forgery, perjury, treachery, theft and every species of villainy which the lowest wretches on earth could practice or invent.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!
  -- Thomas Paine
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For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Almighty, that there should be diversity of religious opinions among us: It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The duty of a true Patriot is to protect his country from its government.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The belief that every human soul was the child of God, and capable of direct inspiration from the Father of all, without mediator or priestly intervention, or sacramental instrumentality, was fatal to all privilege and rank.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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enforce obedience thereto. The object, on either side, doth not justify the means; for the lives of men are too
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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For trade being the consequence of population, men become too much absorbed thereby to attend to anything else. Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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We know the cause which we are engaged in, and though a passionate fondness for it may make us grieve at every injury which threatens it, yet, when the moment of concern is over, the determination to duty returns. We are not moved by the gloomy smile of a worthless king, but by the ardent glow of generous patriotism. We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. In such a case we are sure that we are right; and we leave to you the despairing reflection of being the tool of a miserable tyrant.
  -- Thomas Paine
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The representative system diffuses such a body of knowledge throughout a nation, on the subject of government, as to explode ignorance and preclude imposition. The craft of courts cannot be acted on that ground. There is no place for mystery; nowhere for it to begin. Those who are not in the representation, know as much of the nature of business as those who are. An affectation of mysterious importance would there be scouted. nations can have no secrets; and the secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are always their defects.

In the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly appear. Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a necessary part of his business to understand. It concerns his interest, because it affects his property. He examines the cost, and compares it with the advantages; and above all, he does not adopt the slavish custom of following what in other governments are called Leaders.

It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.

The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws. The enacting of those requires no great expense; and when they are administered, the whole of civil government is performed - the rest is all court contrivance.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Put us, say some, on the footing we were on in sixty-three: To which I answer, the
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy;
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate prejudices between Nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principles of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.

Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally, than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affection of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself.

Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say - thou knowest not so well as I.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution, is power without a right.

All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered;
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication  after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. When
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, are worse than none; and, however it may carry with the appearance of heightened enjoyment, it defeats all the felicity of affection, by leaving it no point to fix upon; divided love is never happy.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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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 will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished. Without consuming, like the Ultima Ratio Regum, it winds its progress from nation to nation, and conquers by a silent operation. Man finds himself changed, he scarcely perceives how. He acquires a knowledge of his rights by attending justly to his interest, and discovers in the event that the strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order "to be free, it is sufficient that he wills it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Were government a mere manufacture or article of commerce, immaterial by whom it should be made or sold, we might as well employ her as another, but when we consider it as the fountain from whence the general manners and morality of a country take their rise, that the persons entrusted with the execution thereof are by their serious example an authority to support these principles, how abominably absurd is the idea of being hereafter governed by a set of men who have been guilty of forgery, perjury, treachery, theft and every species of villainy which the lowest wretches on earth could practice or invent. What greater public curse can befall any country than to be under such authority, and what greater blessing than to be delivered therefrom. The soul of any man of sentiment would rise in brave rebellion against them, and spurn them from the earth.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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I. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility.

II. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.

III. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any Individual, or Any Body of Men, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly derived from it.

In these principles, there is nothing to throw a Nation into confusion by inflaming ambition. They are calculated to call forth wisdom and abilities, and to exercise them for the public good, and for the emolument or aggrandizement of particular descriptions of men or families.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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When we think of the size or dimensions of, a room, our ideas limit themselves to the walls, and there they stop. But when our eye, or our imagination darts into space, that is, when it looks upward into what we call the open air, we cannot conceive any walls or boundaries it can have; and if for the sake of resting our ideas we suppose a boundary, the question immediately renews itself, and asks, what is beyond that boundary? and in the same manner, what beyond the next boundary? and so on till the fatigued imagination returns and says, there is no end.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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If the first king of any country was by election, that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to say, that the right of all future generations is taken away, by the act of the first electors, in their choice not only of a king, but of a family of kings for ever, hath no parrallel in or out of scripture but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free will of all men lost in Adam; and from such comparison, and it will admit of no other, hereditary succession can derive no glory. For as in Adam all sinned, and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty; as our innocence was lost in the first, and our authority in the last; and as both disable us from reassuming some former state and privilege, it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connexion! Yet the most subtile sophist cannot produce a juster simile.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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If nobody will be so kind as to become my foe, I shall need no more fleets nor armies, and shall be forced to reduce my taxes.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness. When, instead of this, it operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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the strength of government does not consist in any thing itself, but in the attachment of a nation, and the interest which a people feel in supporting it. When this is lost, government is but a child in power; and though, like the old government in France, it may harass individuals for a while, it but facilitates its own fall.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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But there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the opportunity of seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances, there is not any description of men that despise monarchy so much as courtiers. But they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be nothing.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man
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The Word of God is the Creation we behold: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
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It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human language, more especially as there is not a universal language, is incapable of being used as a universal means of unchangeable and uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man.

It is only in the Creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all Europe, as is produced by the two Revolutions of America and France. By the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world; and by the latter, in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. To use a trite expression, the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. The insulted German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning to think. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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But, besides the general character of all the prophets, they had also a particular character. They were in parties, and they prophesied for or against, according to the party they were with; as the poetical and political writers of the present day write in defence of the party they associate with against the other.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good. I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene. the sight of the misery, and the unpleasant sensations it suggests, which, though they may be suffocated cannot be extinguished, are a greater drawback upon the felicity of affluence than the proposed ten per cent upon property is worth. He that would not give the one to get rid of the other has no charity, even for himself. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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Teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are made war upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake, it is their duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other light, and from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being the only mode by which he former is carried forward; and consequently every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It may not be improper to observe that in both those instances (the one of Pennsylvania, and the other of the United States), there is no such thing as the idea of a compact between the people on one side, and the government on the other. The compact was that of the people with each other, to produce and constitute a government. To suppose that any government can be a party in a compact with the whole people, is to suppose it to have existence before it can have a right to exist. The only instance in which a compact can take place between the people and those who exercise the government is, that the people shall pay them, while they choose to employ them.

Government is not a trade which any man, or any body of men, has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumeable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it. It
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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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 gradual composure of the senses to receive it. Even calmness has the power of stunning, when it opens too instantly upon us. The long and raging hurricane that should cease in a moment, would leave us in a state rather of wonder than enjoyment; and some moments of recollection must pass, before we could be capable of tasting the felicity of repose. There are but few instances, in which the mind is fitted for sudden transitions: it takes in its pleasures by reflection and comparison and those must have time to act, before the relish for new scenes is complete,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Most wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other. But
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is always the interest of a far greater number of people in a nation to have things right, than to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong, unless it decides to hastily.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Civil government alone, or the government of laws, is not productive of pretences for many taxes; it operates at home, directly under the eye of the country, and precludes the possibility of much imposition. But when the scene is laid in the uncivilized contention of governments, the field of pretences is enlarged, and the country, being no longer a judge, is open to every imposition, which governments please to act.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute, but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilization (and the practice merits not to be called either charity or policy) to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with. The rugged face of society, checkered with the extremes of affluence and want, proves that some extraordinary violence has been committed upon it, and calls on justice for redress. The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible for them to get out of that state themselves. It ought also to be observed that this mass increases in all countries that are called civilized. More persons fall annually into it than get out of it. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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And a government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing;
  -- Thomas Paine, The Works of  -- Thomas Paine: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights Of Man, The Age Of Reason
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Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government by king, lords and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason. Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other countries, but the will of the king is as much the law of the land in Britain as in France, with this difference, that instead of proceeding directly from his mouth, it is handed to the people under the more formidable shape of an act of parliament. For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtlenot more just.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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human language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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The most effectual process is that of improving the condition of man by means of his interest.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Though in a plan of which justice and humanity are the foundation principles, interest ought not to be admitted into the calculation, yet it is always of advantage to the establishment of any plan to show that it is beneficial as a matter of interest. The success of any proposed plan submitted to public consideration must finally depend on the numbers interested in supporting it, united with the justice of its principles.
  -- Thomas Paine
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From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world because, they say, one man and one woman ate an apple? And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer?
  -- Thomas Paine
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Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched,than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.
  -- Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
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Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language,
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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That which we obtain too easily we esteem too lightly.
  -- Thomas Paine
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do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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The more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered . . . Absolute governments, (tho' the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their suffering springs; know likewise the remedy; and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but "show your faith by your works," that God may bless you.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis, #1
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Monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) but the world in blood and ashes. 'Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else?
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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Society in every state is a blessing, but a government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us?
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the reasonableness of the person whom we ask it: who would expect discretion from a fool, candor from a tyrant, or justice from a villain?
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Writings of  -- Thomas Paine 1 1774-79
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The eye accustomed to darkness can hardly bear at first the broad daylight. It is by usage the eye learns to see, and it is the same in passing from any situation to its opposite.
  -- Thomas Paine
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Society in every state is a blessing, but a government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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It is easy to see that when Republican virtues fail, slavery ensues.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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I have always held it an opinion (making it also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law, making use at the same time of every argument to shew its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law might weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those which are good.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.  -- Thomas Paine. Paris, July, 1795.
  -- Thomas Paine,  -- Thomas Paine on Declaration of Rights, First Principles of Government, and the Constitution of 1795
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May she [United States] never forget that a fair national reputation is of as much importance as independence. That it possesses a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even enemies civil. That it gives a dignity which is often superior to power, and commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail.

It would be a circumstance ever to be lamented and never to be forgotten, were a single blot, from any cause whatever, suffered to fall on a revolution, which to the end of time must be an honor to the age that accomplished it: and which has contributed more to enlighten the world, and diffuse a spirit of freedom and liberality among mankind, than any human event (if this may be called one) that ever preceded it.

It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war, that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other times appear so amiable. The continual spectacle of woe blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, renders it familiar. In like manner, are many of the moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity becomes an apology, where it is truly a crime. Yet let but a nation conceive rightly of its character, and it will be chastely just in protecting it. None ever began with a fairer than America and none can be under a greater obligation to preserve it.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Error in opinion has this peculiar advantage with it, that the foremost point of the contrary ground may at any time be reached by the sudden exertion of a thought; and it frequently happens in sentimental differences, that the striking circumstance, or some forcible reason quickly conceived, will effect in an instant what neither argument nor example could produce in an age.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, The Rights of Man and Other Essential Writings
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peace WITH trade, is preferable to war WITHOUT it.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, that formerly surrounded affluence, is passing away in all countries, and leaving the possessor of property to the convulsion of accidents. When wealth and splendor, instead of fascinating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; when, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult on wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate security.

To remove the danger, it is necessary to remove the antipathies, and this can only be done by making property productive of a national blessing, extending to every individual. When the riches of one man above others shall increase the national fund in the same proportion; when it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man acquires, the better it shall for the general mass; it is then that antipathies will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of national interest and protection. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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I remember the late Admiral Saunders declaring in the House of Commons, and that in the time of peace, 'That the city of Madrid laid in ashes was not a sufficient atonement for the Spaniards taking off the rudder of an English sloop of war.' I do not ask whether this is Christianity or morality, I ask whether it is decency? Whether it is proper language for a nation to use? In private life we call it by the plain name of bullying, and the elevation of rank cannot alter its character. It is, I think, exceedingly easy to define what ought to be understood by national honor; for that which is the best character for an individual is the best character for a nation; and wherever the latter exceeds or falls beneath the former, there is a departure from the line of true greatness.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of A GOOD CITIZEN, AN OPEN AND RESOLUTE FRIEND, AND A VIRTUOUS SUPPORTER OF THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND AND OF THE FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES OF AMERICA.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all of one degree. whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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While the Declaration of Rights was before the National Assembly some of its members remarked that if a declaration of rights were published it should be accompanied by a Declaration of Duties. The observation discovered a mind that reflected, and it only erred by not reflecting far enough. A Declaration of rights is, by reciprocity, a Declaration of Duties also. Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
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as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last he beholds with satisfaction, or sees with disappointment, the accomplishment or failure of his predictions.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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It is impossible to find any equivalent counterpoise for the right of suffrage, because it is alone worthy to be its own basis, and cannot thrive as a graft, or an appendage. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing do with laws but to obey them, and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation. -Agrarian Justice
  -- Thomas Paine
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Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new World hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense
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If a law be bad it is one thing to oppose the practice of it, but it is quite a different thing to expose its errors, to reason on its defects, and to show cause why it should be repealed, or why another ought to be substituted in its place. I have always held it an opinion (making it also my practice) that it is better to obey a bad law, making use at the same time of every argument to show its errors and procure its repeal, than forcibly to violate it; because the precedent of breaking a bad law might weaken the force, and lead to a discretionary violation, of those which are good.
  -- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
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Her ideas of national honor seem devoid of that benevolence of heart, that universal expansion of philanthropy, and that triumph over the rage of vulgar prejudice, without which man is inferior to himself, and a companion of common animals. To know who she shall regard or dislike, she asks what country they are of, what religion they profess, and what property they enjoy. Her idea of national honor seems to consist in national insult, and that to be a great people, is to be neither a Christian, a philosopher, or a gentlemen, but to threaten with the rudeness of a bear, and to devour with the ferocity of a lion.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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Of the poetical parts of the Bible, that are called prophecies, I have spoken in the former part of 'The Age of Reason,' and already in this, where I have said that the word for prophet is the Bible-word for Poet, and that the flights and metaphors of those poets, many of which have become obscure by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances, have been ridiculously erected into things called prophecies, and applied to purposes the writers never thought of. When a priest quotes any of those passages, he unriddles it agreeably to his own views, and imposes that explanation upon his congregation as the meaning of the writer. The whore of Babylon has been the common whore of all the priests, and each has accused the other of keeping the strumpet; so well do they agree in their explanations.
  -- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
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