A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of virtue in a republic, suggesting that without it, oppression can arise.
Thomas Paine argues that the moral integrity and virtue of individuals in a republic are crucial for maintaining freedom and preventing tyranny. When such virtue deteriorates, the society risks descending into slavery or oppression, highlighting the interplay between moral values and political stability.
Themes
VirtueRepublicSlaveryOppressionFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of civic responsibility, one might quote Paine to emphasize the need for virtue among citizens.
More from Thomas Paine
All quotes βThat God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.
Thomas PaineRead
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.
Thomas PaineRead
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.
Thomas PaineRead
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.
Thomas PaineRead
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
Similar quotes
Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.
Harry BrowneRead
Meditation is the royal road to the attainment of freedom, a mysterious ladder that reaches from earth to heaven, darkness to light, mortality to Immortality.
SivanandaRead
Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.
David CrystalRead
Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
Lois Mcmaster BujoldRead
To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Robert M. PirsigRead
Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality waiting to be shaped.
Neil GaimanRead