Thomas Paine Quotes

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

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.

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men.

I am sensible that he who means to do mankind a real service must set down with the determination of putting up, and bearing with all their faults, follies, prejudices and mistakes until he can convince them that he is right.

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

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.

He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.

You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

The balance of power is the scale of peace.

The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

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

Man did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity, any part of it.

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

Kill the king but spare the man.

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.

When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.

The accumulation of great wealth is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it, the consequence of which is that the working people perish in old age and the employer abounds in affluence.

Public credit is suspicion asleep.

It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.

When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.

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.

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

Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but "to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious, for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

A single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rabidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarch.

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.

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

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

I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.

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.

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.

It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.

Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

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.

The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men, from custom or fashion or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others.

Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.

Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title.

It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.

Nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice.

Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?