If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.
THOMAS PAINETo argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
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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.
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Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
THOMAS PAINE -
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.
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The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
THOMAS PAINE -
No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.
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.
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An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
THOMAS PAINE -
The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
THOMAS PAINE -
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 -
There are two distinct classes of men – those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.
THOMAS PAINE -
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
THOMAS PAINE -
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
THOMAS PAINE -
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.
THOMAS PAINE -
Virtue is not hereditary.
THOMAS PAINE