Author

Thomas Paine

72 quotations

About Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Topics: Religion Good God Government Men Power

Reputation is what men and women think of us character is what God and angels know of us.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

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.

But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

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

Time makes more converts than reason.

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

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

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

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 cons…

Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.

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

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one.

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

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles he can only discover them.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

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

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

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