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 PAINEHe 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.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.
THOMAS PAINE -
Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.
THOMAS PAINE -
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.
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 -
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 -
You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.
THOMAS PAINE -
Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
THOMAS PAINE -
Men should not petition for rights, but take them.
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 -
From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree.
THOMAS PAINE -
The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
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 -
It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt.
THOMAS PAINE -
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
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