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 PAINEThese are the times that try men’s souls.
More Thomas Paine Quotes
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I consider the war of America against Britain as the country’s war, the public’s war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
THOMAS PAINE -
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
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 -
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
THOMAS PAINE -
I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.
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 -
The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
THOMAS PAINE -
The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
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 -
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 -
You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.
THOMAS PAINE -
Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
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It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.
THOMAS PAINE -
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
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






