The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
THOMAS PAINEThe slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
THOMAS PAINE -
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
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 -
Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
THOMAS PAINE -
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
THOMAS PAINE -
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
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 -
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 PAINE -
You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.
THOMAS PAINE -
The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.
THOMAS PAINE -
It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.
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 -
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
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