Thomas Paine Quotes

Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.

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

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.

Virtue is not hereditary.

I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by attaching it to this filthy book.

Man must go back to nature for information.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.

Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.

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

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

Ah, reader, put thy trust in thy creator, and thou wilt be safe; but if thou trustest to the book called the scriptures thou trustest to the rotten staff of fable and falsehood.

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

My mind is my own church.

The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.

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

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

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

Customs will often outlive the remembrance of their origin.

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.

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

To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right.

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.

All Of Us Might Wish At Times That We Lived In A More Tranquil World....(yet) Our Times Are Challenging And Filled With Opportunity.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected

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.

No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.

It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.

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

On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of conducting it after it is declared.

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

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

The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

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

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

The birthday of a new world is at hand.

But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.

Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.

There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.

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

And this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.

War ought to be no man's wish.