A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.
THOMAS PAINEIt is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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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 -
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 -
Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another. It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man.
THOMAS PAINE -
There are two distinct classes of men – those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.
THOMAS PAINE -
To take away voting is to reduce a man to slavery.
THOMAS PAINE -
Virtue is not hereditary.
THOMAS PAINE -
Government is best which governs least.
THOMAS PAINE -
You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.
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 -
It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt.
THOMAS PAINE -
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.
THOMAS PAINE -
One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
THOMAS PAINE -
An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
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 -
Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.
THOMAS PAINE






