Paine Quotes & Sayings

Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits is a subject as worthy of philosophy as of politics. — Thomas Paine

The true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity. — Thomas Paine

No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. — Thomas Paine

any medium. Henry Stupen of Elco, the electric boat company, purchased PT 9 along with reproduction rights and lengthened the boat to 77 feet in order to carry the four torpedo tubes the U.S. Navy wanted. With Scott-Paine at the controls and the Rolls Royce engines purring beneath him, PT 9 won every sea trial it entered. The US Navy had their PT Boat. Three Packard marine engines replaced PT 9's Rolls Royce engines. — Michael Engelmann

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion? — Thomas Paine

This is why Paine was careful to downplay the distinction between the rich and the poor. He wanted his American readers to focus on distant kings, not local grandees. He wanted them to break with the Crown, not to disturb the class order. — Nancy Isenberg

It is unnatural that a pure stream should flow from a foul fountain its vices are but a continuation of the vices of its origin. A man of moral honor and good political principles, cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful arts, by which such elections are carried. To be a successful candidate, he must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just legislator: and being thus disciplined to corruption it is not to be expected that the representative should be better than the man. — Thomas Paine

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

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

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. — Thomas Paine

And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any. — Thomas Paine

Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience,he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain. — Thomas Paine

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th. — Fiona Shaw

His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. — Thomas Paine

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed. — Thomas Paine

Everything wonderful in appearance has been ascribed to angels, to devils, or to saints. Everything ancient has some legendary tale annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not escaped their practice of corrupting everything. — Thomas Paine

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. — Thomas Paine

Virtue is not hereditary. — Thomas Paine

Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind. — Thomas Paine

And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man. — Thomas Paine

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

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

It is by tracing things to their origin, that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them. — Thomas Paine

A hereditary monarch is as absurd a position as a hereditary doctor or mathematician. — Thomas Paine

And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine. — Edmund Spenser

It be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but "show your faith by your works," that God may bless you. — Thomas Paine

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

Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God. — Thomas Paine

Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
"Well?" Ben nudged him. "Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?"
"Clearly Thomas Paine. I'd be asleep now in my bed."
"Do you remember the name of the street they live on?"
"Let's see ... Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?"
"Canal Street! Thank you."
"I'm going to stop speaking."
"Harry, admit it, if you weren't so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself."
"Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself."
"Exactly!"
"Ugh."
"I'm surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?"
"Stunned. — Paullina Simons

There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure. — Thomas Paine

The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice. — Thomas Paine

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

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

Taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes — 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

Thomas Paine wrote in "The Age of Reason," "In this case, the person who is irreverently called the son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of deaths, with scarcely a momentary interval of life. — Anonymous

Kill the king but spare the man. — Thomas Paine

That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names. — Thomas Paine

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. — Christopher Hitchens

The choicest gift of God [is] the gift of reason. — Thomas Paine

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. — Thomas Paine

The United States should be an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty. — Thomas Paine

We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors. — Ray Bradbury

Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others. — 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

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it. It — Thomas Paine

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

For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire. — Thomas Paine

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

It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions. — Thomas Paine

Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'tis time to part. — Thomas Paine

The constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault lies, some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine. — Thomas Paine

Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. — Thomas Paine

What oil companies don't want you to know is that refineries use a huge amount of electricity in refining gasoline. And that's usually not even figured into reports about gas cars' overall energy use. — Chris Paine

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right. — Thomas Paine

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. — Thomas Paine

{When Abraham Lincoln was 26 years old in 1835, he wrote a defense of Thomas Paine's deism; a political associate, Samuel Hill, burned it to save Lincoln's political career. Historian Roy Basler, the editor of Lincoln's papers, said Paine had a strong influence on Lincoln's style:}

No other writer of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Jefferson, parallels more closely the temper or gist of Lincoln's later thought. In style, Paine above all others affords the variety of eloquence which, chastened and adapted to Lincoln's own mood, is revealed in Lincoln's formal writings. — Roy Basler

Such is the passage, x. 14, where, after giving an account that the sun stood still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, at the command of Joshua, (a tale only fit to amuse children). This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. — Thomas Paine

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

It is a fool only, and not the philosopher, nor even the prudent man, that will live as if there were no God ... Were a man impressed as fully and strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. — Thomas Paine

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

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 ... — Thomas Paine

Dukhoborcheskaya — Thomas Paine

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people ... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie ... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us. — Jim Hightower

The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind. — Thomas Paine

But there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the opportunity of seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances, there is not any description of men that despise monarchy so much as courtiers. But they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be nothing. — Thomas Paine

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous ... — Thomas Paine

A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose. — Thomas Paine

Wrong cannot have a legal descendant. — Thomas Paine

When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example for the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other, and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal. — Thomas Paine

Mutual fear is a principal link in the chain of mutual love. — Thomas Paine

It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God and have credit among us. — Thomas Paine

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. — Thomas Paine

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days. — Thomas A. Edison

There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave. — Thomas Paine

Oil companies earned a permanent enemy in me when they messed with the electric car the first time around, and I think they continue to do a disservice in making it seem like fossil fuels are cheaper than they really are in terms of total cost. — Chris Paine

Human nature is not of itself vicious. — Thomas Paine

All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions. — Thomas Paine

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

It is not the nature of avarice to be satisfied with anything but money. Every passion that acts upon mankind has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and fluctuating; they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a fixed, uniform passion. — Thomas Paine

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

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

But from the errors of other nations let us learn wisdom, and lay hold of the present opportunity - to begin government at the right end. — Thomas Paine

As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men. — Thomas Paine

Those three means are Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The first two are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected.
As mystery answered all general purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, the other the legerdemain.
As Mystery and Miracle took charge of the past and the present, Prophecy took charge of the future, and rounded the tenses of faith. — Thomas Paine

Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. — Thomas Paine

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

The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy. — Thomas Paine

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin. — Thomas Paine

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism. — Thomas Paine

A bad cause will never be supported by bad means and bad men. — Thomas Paine

I fear not, I see not reason for fear. In the end we will be the victors. For though at times the flame of liberty may cease to shine, the ember will never expire. — Thomas Paine

Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this ... Her cause was good. Her principles just and liberal. Her temper serene and firm ... The remembrance then of what is past, if it operates rightly must inspire her with the most laudable of an ambition, that of adding to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great adversity ... Let then, the world see that she can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to the bravest virtue in time of war. — Thomas Paine

It is a duty incumbent on every true deist, that he vindicates the moral justice of God against the calumnies of the Bible. — Thomas Paine

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

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

It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as placemen, pensioners, lords of the bedchamber, lords of the kitchen, lords of the necessary-house, and the lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure. — Thomas Paine

I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree. — Thomas Paine

All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe. — Thomas Paine

Each man too is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesuswould absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson