Quotes About Thomas Paine

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

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible7 is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God.

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.

the so much boasted constitution of England...is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise...

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It

How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust.

It has set up a religion of pomp and revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

Their very independence from Great Britain resulted, as Thomas Paine had predicted it would in 1776, from the implausibility that "a Continent [could] be perpetually governed by an island."12