A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Thomas PaineRead
The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fear inhibits critical thinking and rational thought.
In this quote, Thomas Paine emphasizes that fear can overpower an individual's ability to think freely and critically. It suggests that when people are dominated by fear, they become paralyzed and unable to engage in thoughtful reflection or analysis, which can have detrimental effects on their ability to foster independence and Enlightenment in society.
Themes
FearThinkingIndependenceRationalityFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
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
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The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs
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