Thomas Paine

Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another. It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man.

There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.

What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder.

The choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason; as if man could give reason to himself.

Government is a necessary evil

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous conscientiousness of honor. It is not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labor and poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not in that mass.

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.

'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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

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

Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous while they actually lived. . . . "The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast, though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them."

When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.