Quotes from Thomas Paine

I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection.

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.

Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation.

The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?

No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.

Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

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.

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

Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

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

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.

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

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

If a God, he could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a man his death could be no more than the death of any other person

There is scarcely any part of science or any thing in nature, which those impostors and blasphemers of science, called priests, as well as Christians and Jews, have not, at some time or other, perverted, or sought to pervert to the purpose of superst

Those who expect to reap the blessings of liberty must undergo the fatigues 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.