A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of vigilance against the abuse of power.
Thomas Paine highlights the critical need for perpetual awareness and caution regarding the potential for power to overreach and become excessive. This idea serves as a reminder that societies must actively monitor authority to prevent tyranny and ensure that power does not infringe upon individual freedoms and rights.
Themes
PowerVigilanceLibertyAuthorityExcess
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing government accountability, one might say, 'As Thomas Paine asserted, we must watch against the attempted encroachment of power.'
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
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Susan SontagRead
You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.
Toni MorrisonRead
There's something about witnessing something in the sky that makes people think they're seeing something unique or special. I don't really understand the psychology of it, to be honest.
Neil Degrasse TysonRead
Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.
Maureen DowdRead
Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. 'That's all you're going to give me? You're just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I'm set up.' And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions.
Francis ChanRead
And I think that, at some point, I am, as John Lewis and many others, are a bridge-builder. The goal is to bring America together and Americans. We are a great nation. But we must become a greater nation.
Martin Luther King IiiRead