A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques laws that force acceptance of certain currencies, suggesting they are unfair and promote oppression.
Thomas Paine's quote argues that if anything holds intrinsic value equivalent to gold and silver, it would not need government enforcement to be accepted as currency. He implies that tender laws—those that mandate what can be used as money—are unjust, oppressive, and serve to perpetuate fraud rather than reflecting true value in society.
Themes
ValueTender LawGoldSilverOppressionFraudCurrency
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about monetary policy, one could quote Paine to argue against government-mandated currency.
More from Thomas Paine
All quotes →That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
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I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
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Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
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The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
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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
Thomas PaineRead
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