Thomas Paine famous quotes

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

#Cheer #Blow #Gun

When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.
-- Thomas Paine

#Taken #Rights #Perfect

For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Forever #Might

When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government
-- Thomas Paine

#Happiness #Country #Ignorance

I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state; up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.
-- Thomas Paine

#Littles #Too Much #Revolution

Men should not petition for rights, but take them
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Rights #Petitions

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.
-- Thomas Paine

#Christian #Church #Use

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate predjudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.
-- Thomas Paine

#Country #War #Men

It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive, that although laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet that they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non repealing passes for consent.
-- Thomas Paine

#Law #Succeed #Generations

I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.
-- Thomas Paine

#Fashion #Mistake #May

I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America - it is the Country from whence all reformations must originally spring - I despair of seeing an Abolition of the infernal trafic in Negroes - we must push that matter further on your side the water - I wish that a few well instructed Negroes could be sent among their Brethren in Bondage, for until they are enabled to take their own part nothing will be done.
-- Thomas Paine

#Country #Spring #Your Side

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Age #World

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.
-- Thomas Paine

#Remembrance #Atheism #Positive Atheism

Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.
-- Thomas Paine

#Land #Community

In the first part of 'Rights of Man' I have endeavoured to show...that there does not exist a right to establish hereditary government...because hereditary government always means a government yet to come, and the case always is, that the people who are to live afterwards, have always the same right to choose a government for themselves, as the people had who have lived before them.
-- Thomas Paine

#Mean #Men #Rights

If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.
-- Thomas Paine

#Believe #Tolerance #I Believe

I know not whether taxes are raised to fight wars, or wars are fought in order to raise taxes.
-- Thomas Paine

#War #Fighting #Order

It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.
-- Thomas Paine

#Government #Religion #Reviews

The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.
-- Thomas Paine

#America #Historical #World

The more acquisitions the government makes abroad, the more taxes the people have to pay at home.
-- Thomas Paine

#Home #Government #People

There is no greater tyranny than that of the dead over the living.
-- Thomas Paine

#Tyranny

To take away (voting) is to reduce a man to slavery.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Voting #Slavery

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.
-- Thomas Paine

#Life #Happiness #Religious

Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
-- Thomas Paine

#Death #Dying #Uncertain

As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavor to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure.
-- Thomas Paine

#Believe #Rights #Political

The essential psychological requirement of a free society is the willingness on the part of the individual to accept responsibility for his life. - Edith Packer When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
-- Thomas Paine

#Responsibility #Government #People

In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are made war upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake, it is their duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other light, and from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable.
-- Thomas Paine

#Country #War #Views

One of the evils of paper money is that it turns the whole country into stock jobbers. The precariousness of its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect. Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon accident, caprice, and party; and as it is the interest of some to depreciate and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country.
-- Thomas Paine

#Country #Real #Party

If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
-- Thomas Paine

#Law #Support #Gold

There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper emission, then to have a legal tender under the pretense of supporting its credit, and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of paper money schemes.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Scarcity #Credit

Virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine

#Virtue

Money, when considered as the fruit of many years' industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow's dowry and children's portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.
-- Thomas Paine

#Children #Mean #Years

It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies.
-- Thomas Paine

#Lying #Numbers #Unity

How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
-- Thomas Paine

#Running #Power #Watches

Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order...
-- Thomas Paine

#Gun #Order #Law

Commerce diminishes the spirit, both of patriotism and military defence.
-- Thomas Paine

#Life #Military #Spirit

Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.
-- Thomas Paine

#Class #Perfect #Temptation

Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.
-- Thomas Paine

#Weed #Together #Suspicion

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.
-- Thomas Paine

#Names #Causes #Tyranny

The period of debate is closed. Arms, as a last resource, must decide the contest.
-- Thomas Paine

#Arms #Lasts #Conservative

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
-- Thomas Paine

#Veterans Day #Time #Peace

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #War #4th Of July

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

Character is much easier kept than recovered.
-- Thomas Paine

#Life #War #Integrity

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #Life #Wisdom

I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.
-- Thomas Paine

#Country #Patriotism #Liberty

The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.
-- Thomas Paine

#Fall #Men #Feet

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
-- Thomas Paine

#Motivation #War #4th Of July

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
-- Thomas Paine

#Trust #Men #Accountability

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.
-- Thomas Paine

#4th Of July #Government #Want

The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind.
-- Thomas Paine

#Government #Liberty #Principles

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.
-- Thomas Paine

#War #Government #Bystanders

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
-- Thomas Paine

#Fear #Motivation #Tyrants

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
-- Thomas Paine

#Education #Dark #Mind

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

#Pain #Freedom #Fear

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
-- Thomas Paine

#Truth #Men #May

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #Christian #Pain

The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
-- Thomas Paine

#Revolution #Principles #Danger

Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.
-- Thomas Paine

#Hands #Government #Economics

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

#Country #War #Rights

Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.
-- Thomas Paine

#Freedom #Blessing #Support

The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.
-- Thomas Paine

#Truth #Eye #Mind

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.
-- Thomas Paine

#Family #Running #Children

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
-- Thomas Paine

#Strength #Heart #Reflection

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

#Men #Class #Rights

If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of Court Governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices.
-- Thomas Paine

#Ocean #Reflection #Men

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.
-- Thomas Paine

#Pain #Thinking #Common Sense

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
-- Thomas Paine

#Peace #Truth #War

Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Land #Community

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

#Freedom #Equality #Men

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

#Country #People #Matter

I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.
-- Thomas Paine

#Children #Trouble #My Children

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.
-- Thomas Paine

#Motivation #Fear #Government

Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.
-- Thomas Paine

#Self Esteem #Fighting #Enemy

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
-- Thomas Paine

#4th Of July #Medicine #Religion

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
-- Thomas Paine

#Atheist #Mean #Heart

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
-- Thomas Paine

#Motivation #Men #Personality

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
-- Thomas Paine

#Motivation #War #Government

In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.
-- Thomas Paine

#Kings #War #Pride

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
-- Thomas Paine

#Truth #Honest #Dare

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

#Men #Rights #Voting

There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Two #Class

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
-- Thomas Paine

#Change #Motivation #4th Of July

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.
-- Thomas Paine

#Murder #Cruelty #Teach

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
-- Thomas Paine

#Peace #War #4th Of July

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Thinking #Slavery

A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.
-- Thomas Paine

#Exercise #Government #Limits

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
-- Thomas Paine

#Motivation #Heart #Mind

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

#Atheist #Philosophy #Men

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

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

#God #Country #Freedom

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
-- Thomas Paine

#Inspirational #Positive #Strength

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
-- Thomas Paine

#Trust #Motivation #Mistake

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
-- Thomas Paine

#Men #Belief #Murder

One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ***** for a lion.
-- Thomas Paine

#Kings #Giving #Lions

Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.
-- Thomas Paine

#Common Sense #Common

Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
-- Thomas Paine

#Wise #Men #Matter

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
-- Thomas Paine

#Love #Europe #Tyrants

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
-- Thomas Paine

#Country #4th Of July #Fighting