Thomas Paine Quotations

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

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

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

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

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Government, even in its best state, 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.

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

Virtues are acquired through endeavor, Which rests wholly upon yourself. So, to praise others for their virtues Can but encourage one's own efforts.

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.

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.

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.

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

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

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

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

'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.

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.

It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

The art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Those who want to reap the benefits of this great nation must bear the fatigue of supporting it.

To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.

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

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

The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

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

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.

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.

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

It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.

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

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.

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

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

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

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.

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

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

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.

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

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.

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

These are the times that try men's souls.

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

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

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

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.

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

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.

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.

Now, Sir, it is impossible for serious men, to whom God has given the divine gift of reason, and who employs that reason to reverence and adore the God that gave it, it is I say, impossible for such a man to put confidence in a book that abounds with

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

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself - that is my doctrine

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

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.

Is it popular to pay our debts, to do justice, to defend the injured and insulted country, to protect the aged and the infant, and give top liberty a land to live in? Then must taxation, as the means by which these things are done, be popular likewi

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.

These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

The New Testament, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act

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.

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.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.

the colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.

Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men who can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance

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.

The earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race." As the land gets cultivated, "it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is in individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent..to every person, rich or poor...because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created, or inherited from those who did

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

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils.

The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools, in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labour with studied ingenuity to ascribe every thing they behold to innate properties of matter, and jump over all the rest by saying, that matter is eternal.

It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences, and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles: he can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.

Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:-For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.

There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.

It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all.

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

These are the days that try man's heart.

The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty

The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture.

The more we bestow the richer we become.

The fate of Charles I has only made kings more subtle, not more just.

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

The choicest gift of God [is] the gift of reason.

Government is a necessary evil

My country is wherever liberty lives.

Let the world see that this nation can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to her bravest valor in time of war.

It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt

For freemen like brothers agree; With one spirit endured, they one friendship pursued, And their temple was Liberty Tree