A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Government represents the loss of freedom and innocence, while luxurious power structures arise from past beauty and simplicity.
In this quote, Thomas Paine suggests that the establishment of governments signifies a departure from the pure and innocent state of human existence. He draws a parallel between government and clothing, implying that both serve to cover up a deeper truth; specifically, that opulent establishments, like royal palaces, are constructed upon the destruction of a more natural and harmonious way of living, reminiscent of a lost paradise.
Themes
GovernmentInnocencePowerParadiseFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
During a political discussion on the nature of power and its impact on society.
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.
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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.
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
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