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 PAINEIt is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.
THOMAS PAINE -
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
THOMAS PAINE -
An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
THOMAS PAINE -
It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt.
THOMAS PAINE -
Government is not a trade which any man or 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 resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.
THOMAS PAINE -
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
THOMAS PAINE -
It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies.
THOMAS PAINE -
The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?
THOMAS PAINE -
When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.
THOMAS PAINE -
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 -
Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.
THOMAS PAINE -
Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.
THOMAS PAINE -
You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.
THOMAS PAINE -
In Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.
THOMAS PAINE -
A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
THOMAS PAINE