A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that when people have lost every other right, the right to rebel against oppressive authority is fully justified.
Thomas Paine emphasizes the intrinsic human right to revolt when all other freedoms and rights are stripped away. His assertion highlights the idea that rebellion becomes not just a matter of choice, but a necessary response to tyranny, underlining a fundamental principle of justice and human dignity.
Themes
RebellionRightsOppressionJusticeTyranny
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech on civil rights to emphasize the importance of standing up against oppression.
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.
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
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