Thomas Paine Quotes

• It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Truth

• It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Treat, Falsehood

• Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Religion

  Tags in See

• Human nature is not of itself vicious.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Human

• He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Death

  Tags in Nation, War, Hell

• He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Enemy

  Tags in Liberty, Oppression, Own, Make, Reach, Freedom

• He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Against, Better, Faith, Tyranny, Real

• Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Government, State, Even, Necessary

• Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Discover, School, Every, Universe, Principle

• Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Religion

  Tags in Good, Every, Know

• Character is much easier kept than recovered.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Kept, Character, Much, Reputation

• But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Nature, Truth

  Tags in Liberty, Appearing, Want

• Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Belief, God, Religion

  Tags in Cruel, Man

• Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mischief, World, Property

• Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in System, Shock, Anything, True, Mind

• An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Army, Soldier, Principles

• A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Vice, Moderation, Good, Virtue, Temper, Thing, Principle

• The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value.

  Thomas Paine

  Tags in Wound

• That ideas should spread freely from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

  Thomas Paine

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Creativity

• The highest form of treason: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

  T. S. Eliot

  Tags in Ethics

Thomas Paine (74)

Birth:	29th January, 1737
Death:	8th June, 1809
Nationality:	American, British
Profession:	Activist, Author, Theorist

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