Jump to content

Thomas Paine

From Wikiquote
I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Thomas Paine (February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – 8 June 1809) was a British-American political writer, theorist, and activist who had a great influence on the thoughts and ideas which led to the American Revolution and the United States Declaration of Independence. He wrote three of the most influential and controversial works of the 18th Century: Common Sense, Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of transnational human rights.

See also: Common Sense · The Crisis · Rights of Man · The Age of Reason

Quotes

[edit]

1770s

[edit]
  • Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell.
    • The Case of the Officers of Excise (1772), p. 20
  • This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
  • A man who is so exceedingly civil that for the sake of quietude and a peaceable name will silently see the community imposed upon, or their rights invaded, may, in his principles, be a good man, but cannot be stiled a useful one, neither does he come up to the full mark of his duty; for silence becomes a kind of crime when it operates as a cover or an encouragement to the guilty.
    • "To the People of America", Pennsylvania Packet (January 23, 1779)

1780s

[edit]
  • War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances ... that no human wisdom can calculate the end.

1790s

[edit]
  • And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any.
    • Letter to George Washington (30 July 1796)
  • It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
    • "A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason" (12 May 1797), published in an 1852 edition of The Age of Reason, p. 205
  • [W]e hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.
    • Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 3
  • We think it also necessary to express our astonishment that a government, desirous of being called free, should prefer connection with the most despotic and arbitrary powers in Europe.
    • Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 5
  • We live to improve, or we live in vain
    • Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 5
  • As to riots and tumults, let those answer for them, who, by willful misrepresentations, endeavor to excite and promote them; or who seek to stun the sense of the nation, and to lose the great cause of public good in the outrages of a misinformed mob. We take our ground on principles that require no such riotous aid. We have nothing to apprehend from the poor; for we are pleading their cause. And we fear not proud oppression, for we have truth on our side.
    • Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 6
  • There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of denunciation that now prevails. If every individual is to indulge his private malignancy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all authority be destroyed. Calumny is a species of treachery that ought to be punished as well as any other kind of treachery. It is a private vice productive of public evils; because it is possible to irritate men into disaffection by continual calumny who never intended to be disaffected.
    It is therefore equally as necessary to guard against the evils of unfounded or malignant suspicion as against the evils of blind confidence. It is equally as necessary to protect the characters of public officers from calumny as it is to punish them for treachery or misconduct.
  • One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
    • Worship and Church Bells (1797)
  • It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries.
    • Worship and Church Bells (1797)
  • Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, which the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.
    • Worship and Church Bells (1797)

Letter to the Addressers (1792)

[edit]
It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich.
Letter to the Addressers of the Late Proclamation
  • And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.
    • On Edmund Burke's reactions to the American and French revolutions.
  • There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.
  • When the qualification to vote is regulated by years, it is placed on the firmest possible ground, because the qualification is such as nothing but dying before the time can take away; and the equality of Rights, as a principle, is recognized in the act of regulating the exercise. But when Rights are placed upon, or made dependent upon property, they are on the most precarious of all tenures. "Riches make themselves wings, and fly away," and the rights fly with them ; and thus they become lost to the man when they would be of most value.
  • It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.
  • 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 a species of vice.
  • It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

First Principles of Government (1795)

[edit]
Dissertation on First Principles of Government (July 1795)
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.
  • The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
  • It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
  • It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.
  • An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. 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.

Agrarian Justice (1797)

[edit]
Full text online
  • When we reflect on the long and dense night in which France and all Europe have remained plunged by their governments and their priests, we must feel less surprise than grief at the bewilderment caused by the first burst of light that dispels the darkness.
    • Author's Inscription: French Edition
  • Let us maintain inviolably equality in the sacred right of suffrage: public security can never have a basis more solid.
    • Author's Inscription: French Edition
  • Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
    • Agrarian Justice
  • I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.
    • Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
  • There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.
    • Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
  • Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
    • Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
  • Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them; and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation.
    • Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
  • An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.
    • Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created

Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

[edit]
"A Discourse delivered by Thomas Paine, at the Society of the Theophilanthropists at Paris, 1798", reviewed by Ralph Griffiths, G. E. Griffiths in The Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal, vol. 30 (1799), pp. 113-4; republished in Miscellaneous Letters and Essays, on Various Subjects (1817), pp. 62–72
All the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
  • The society adopts neither rites nor priesthood, and it will never lose sight of the resolution not to advance any thing as a society inconvenient to any sect or sects, in any time or country, and under any government.
    It will be seen that it is so much the more easy for the society to keep within this circle, because, that the dogmas of the Theophilanthropists are those upon which all the sects have agreed, that their moral is.that upon which there has never been the least dissent; and that the name they have taken expresses the double end of all the sects, that of leading to the adoration of God and love of man.
    • Introduction
  • The Theophilanthropists do not call themselves the disciples of such or such a man. They avail themselves of the wise precepts that have been transmitted by writers of all countries and in all ages.
    • Introduction
  • The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.
    • Introduction
  • Religion has two principal enemies, fanaticism and infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • The universe is the bible of a true Theophilanthropist. It is there that he reads of God. It is there that the proofs of his existence are to be sought and to be found. As to written or printed books, by whatever name they are called, they are the works of man's hands, and carry no evidence in themselves that God is the author of any of them. It must be in something that man could not make, that we must seek evidence for our belief, and that something is the universe; the true bible; the inimitable word, of God.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study— It is the study of God through his works — It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection.
    Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion.
  • The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing, called perpetual motion, would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being, but that of the Creator of motion. When the pretenders to Atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.
    When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter and jump over all the rest by saying that matter is eternal.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • Giving then to matter all the properties which philosophy knows it has, or all that atheism ascribes to it, and can prove, and even supposing matter to be eternal, it will not account for the system of the universe or of the solar system, because it will not account for motion, and it is motion that preserves it. When, therefore, we discover a circumstance of such immense importance, that without it the universe could not exist, and for which neither matter, nor any, nor all, the properties of matter can account, we are by necessity forced into the rational and comfortable belief of the existence of a cause superior to matter, and that cause man calls, God.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
Infidelity by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account, and yet it pretends to demonstration.
  • As to that which is called nature, it is no other than the laws by which motion and action of every kind, with respect to unintelligible matter, is regulated. And when we speak of looking through nature up to nature's God, we speak philosophically the same rational language as when we speak of looking through human laws up to the power that ordained them.
    God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon.
    But infidelity by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account, and yet it pretends to demonstration. It reasons from what it sees on the surface of the earth, but it does not carry itself on the solar system existing by motion. It sees upon the surface a perpetual decomposition and recomposition of matter. It sees that an oak produces an acorn, an acorn an oak, a bird an egg, an egg a bird, and so on. In things of this kind it sees something which it calls a natural cause, but none of the causes it sees is the cause of that motion which preserves the solar system.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
To God, and not to man, are all men to account for their belief.
  • The atheist who affects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects reason, plunge themselves alike into inextricable difficulties. The one perverts the sublime and enlightening study of natural philosophy into a deformity of absurdities by not reasoning to the end. The other loses himself in the obscurity of metaphysical theories, and dishonours the Creator, by treating the study of his works with contempt. The one is a half-rational of whom there is some hope, the other a visionary to whom we must be charitable.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.
  • It was the excess to which imaginary systems of religion had been carried, and the intolerance, persecutions, burnings, and massacres, they occasioned, that first induced certain persons to propagate infidelity; thinking, that upon the whole, that it was better not to believe at all, than to believe a multitude of things and complicated creeds, that occasioned so much mischief in the world. But those days are past, persecution has ceased, and the antidote then set up against it has no longer even the shadow of apology. We profess, and we proclaim in peace, the pure, unmixed, comfortable, and rational belief of a God, as manifested to us in the universe. We do this without any apprehension of that belief being made a cause of persecution as other beliefs have been, or of suffering persecution ourselves. To God, and not to man, are all men to account for their belief.
    • A Discourse, &c. &c.

1800s

[edit]
It is the duty of every man, so far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.
  • The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.
    • An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry (1803-1805); found in manuscript form after Paine's death and thought to have been written for an intended part III of The Age of Reason. It was partially published in 1810 and published in its entirety in 1818.
  • If a man makes the press utter atrocious things he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that "error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it." This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness.
  • I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spend in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.
  • Let me have none of your Popish stuff! Get away with you, good morning.
    • Last words (June 1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly, vol. 25; vol. 31, p. 398


Disputed

[edit]

African Slavery in America (March 1775)

[edit]
Disputed authorship, included in publication where Paine was editor
That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising.
  • To Americans. That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.
  • Our Traders in Men (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of that Slave-Trade, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts; and such as shun and stiffle all these, wilfully sacrifice Conscience, and the character of integrity to that golden Idol.
  • The Managers of that Trade themselves, and others, testify, that many of these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment in the first year; besides all that are slain in the unnatural wars excited to take them. So much innocent blood have the Managers and Supporters of this inhuman Trade to answer for to the common Lord of all!
  • Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.
  • They show as little Reason as Conscience who put the matter by with saying — "Men, in some cases, are lawfully made Slaves, and why may not these?" So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding—"They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it." Such men may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.
  • Most shocking of all is alledging the Sacred Scriptures to favour this wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and Conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways; Mr. Baxter declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather than Christians; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some say, "the practice was permitted to the Jews." To which may be replied,
  • The example of the Jews, in many things, may not be imitated by us; they had not only orders to cut off several nations altogether, but if they were obliged to war with others, and conquered them, to cut off every male; they were suffered to use polygamy and divorces, and other things utterly unlawful to us under clearer light.
  • The plea is, in a great measure, false; they had no permission to catch and enslave people who never injured them.
  • Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came, under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with all these Divine precepts? Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would we think it just?—One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more than Reason, or the Bible.
  • As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!
  • As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.
  • So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.
  • If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their children's; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably sooner free.
  • Certainly one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder, robbery, lewdness, and barbarity, as for this practice: They are not more contrary to the natural dictates of Conscience, and feelings of Humanity; nay, they are all comprehended in it.
  • But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider.
  • With what consistency, or decency they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without any pretence of authority, or claim upon them?
  • How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?
  • Whether, then, all ought not immediately to discontinue and renounce it, with grief and abhorrence? Should not every society bear testimony against it, and account obstinate persisters in it bad men, enemies to their country, and exclude them from fellowship; as they often do for much lesser faults?
The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them more inhuman savages if they embraced it.
  • The great Question may be—What should be done with those who are enslaved already? To turn the old and infirm free, would be injustice and cruelty; they who enjoyed the labours of their better days should keep, and treat them humanely. As to the rest, let prudent men, with the assistance of legislatures, determine what is practicable for masters, and best for them. Perhaps some could give them lands upon reasonable rent, some, employing them in their labour still, might give them some reasonable allowances for it; so as all may have some property, and fruits of their labours at their own disposal, and be encouraged to industry; the family may live together, and enjoy the natural satisfaction of exercising relative affections and duties, with civil protection, and other advantages, like fellow men. Perhaps they might sometime form useful barrier settlements on the frontiers. Thus they may become interested in the public welfare, and assist in promoting it; instead of being dangerous, as now they are, should any enemy promise them a better condition.
  • The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them more inhuman savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has been pursued in opposition to the Redeemer's cause, and the happiness of men: Are we not, therefore, bound in duty to him and to them to repair these injuries, as far as possible, by taking some proper measures to instruct, not only the slaves here, but the Africans in their own countries? Primitive Christians laboured always to spread their Divine Religion; and this is equally our duty while there is an Heathen nation: But what singular obligations are we under to these injured people!
  • These are the sentiments of Justice and Humanity.

Women, Adored and Oppressed (1775)

[edit]
Published anonymously in the Pennsylvania Magazine, August 1775
  • If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost - without exception - at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness He has been at once their tyrant and their slave.


Misattributed

[edit]
  • Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
    • George S. Patton: "Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way", as quoted in Pocket Patriot: Quotes from American Heroes (2005) edited by Kelly Nickell, p. 157
  • It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.
    • Edward Abbey, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." as written in "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" (Vox Clamantis en Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal (1990), ISBN 0312064888.
  • The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one-half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
  • Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself—that is my doctrine.
    • Robert Green Ingersoll: "...my religion is simply this: First. Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself. Second..." in "The Limitations of Toleration" (The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, vol. 7, pp. 217-260, quotation on p. 258).
  • The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
    • Commonly attributed to Paine, even on memorials, and justly describes his ideals, but found nowhere in his writings. It is actually derived from a quote in Rights of Man: Part 2, "My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."

Quotes about Paine

[edit]
Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain. ~ John Adams
  • You know that the unanimity of the States finally depended on the vote of Joseph Hewes, and was finally determined by him. And yet history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine! Sat verbum sapienti ["a word to the wise is sufficient"].
    • John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (22 June 1819); Adams was lamenting that Paine's Common Sense had received much more attention than the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, which Adams discovered in 1819, and in comparison to which he judged Paine's Common Sense to be "a poor ignorant, Malicious, short-sighted, Crapulous Mass". Sometimes only "History is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine" has been quoted, which makes it seem a statement of praise, rather than one of irritation and anger.
  • Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.
    • Attributed to John Adams since at least its appearance in the Annual Report of the Attorney General (1957) by New York Department of Law; in Religion and Political Thought‎ (2006) by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward it quoted as a statement of 1805; conflicting attribution is made in Thomas Paine and the Promise of America‎ (2006) by Harvey J. Kaye, p. 5, where it is attributed to Joel Barlow. The earliest incident of it yet found in internet searches is The Tragic Patriot: A Drama of Historical Significance in Five Acts and Twenty-Five Scenes (1954) by Joseph Lewis.
  • I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine.
    • John Adams, in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (29 October 1805). Though these are often cited as if they were words which continued in his early admiration and respect for Paine, they actually came at a time of bitter dispute with many of his religious and political ideas. A more extensive quotation of the statement reads: "I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity as you do, and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy, Brutality, Daemons, Buonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the Burning Brand from the Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason. I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can be no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine.".
  • He has no country, no affections that constitute the pillars of patriotism.
    • John Quincy Adams to John Adams (3 April 1797), quoted in Worthington Chauncey Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams: Vol. II. 1796-1801 (1913), p. 157
  • Free trade as a plebeian creed had a long tradition going back to the Levellers and Thomas Paine – who had worked out a sort of pre-Cobdenite philosophy of history based on peace, retrenchment, international free trade, and disarmament.
    • Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘Popular Liberals, Gladstonian finance and the debate on taxation, 1860–1874’, in Eugenio F. Biagini and Alastair J. Reid (eds.), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (1991), p. 135
I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. ~ Thomas Alva Edison
  • Thomas Paine has not only been long actuated by, but that he formerly gloried in avowing, an implacable animosity and rooted hatred to this country; and that not merely to its Government, but to its interests, its welfare, its national character, its national honour, its commercial and naval greatness.
    • John Bowles, A Protest against T. Paine's "Rights of Man" (1792), p. viii
  • The neglected pioneer of one revolution, the honoured victim of another, brave to the point of folly, and as humane as he was brave, no man in his generation preached republican virtue in better English, nor lived it with a finer disregard of self.
    • H. N. Brailsford, "Thomas Paine", in Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle (1913); as cited in Thomas Paine (1988) by A. J. Ayer, p. 188
  • What more, in 1791, could be necessary, to vindicate Burke's Cassandra-like Reflections on the French Revolution, than the publication and ominous popularity of Tom Paine's Rights of Man? Such a book it was, that a generation later Newman's pupils took it as evidence of a singular strength of mind in their tutor that he was known to have read and to possess a copy. He kept it, indeed, under lock and key and let it out only to those who, he was assured, could come to no harm in consequence.
    • Geoffrey Faber, Oxford Apostles: A Character Study of the Oxford Movement (1936), p. 18
  • Thomas Paine was the most far-seeing Englishman of the eighteenth century... [H]e remains the major prophet of democracy and representative government... Almost a century before Lincoln he sought to write into the American Constitution a clause against slavery. Long before John Stuart Mill, he championed the rights of women. He was among the very first of English writers to espouse the cause of Indian freedom. Well ahead of my old friends, Dick Crossman or Barbara Castle, he had a good plan for old age pensions. And how men in all our modern parties might tremble at his proposals for land nationalisation; he wanted new laws for marriage and divorce. International arbitration, family allowances, maternity benefits, free education, prison reform, full employment—yes much of the future the Labour Party has offered was previously on offer, in much better English, from Thomas Paine.
    • Michael Foot, ‘The Greatest Exile’, Debts of Honour (1980), pp. 168, 173
  • As a man of words and a man of action combined, no other figure of this century could match the way he would take all national frontiers in his stride. He was the first who could properly call himself a citizen of the world, and who sought to translate his claim into action. Amazingly, some of his supposedly less well-educated contemporaries saw all this quite clearly when it was concealed from their terrified rulers. Soon after the publication of The Rights of Man in 1791 one of his Yorkshire disciples wrote: ‘Our views of The Rights of Man are not confined solely to this small island but are extended to the whole human race, black or white, high or low.’ That was the true Paineite doctrine; it was no accident that the American Paine was one of the first to denounce slavery and the English Paine one of the first to describe the lineaments of the welfare state.
    • Michael Foot, ‘Citizen Paine’, The Guardian (16 November 1989), quoted in The Uncollected Michael Foot: Essays Old and New, ed. Brian Brivati (2003), pp. 286–287
  • He was emphatic that the Bible was mostly "a history of the grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales" so that, he said, "I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name". The true word of God, rather, was the nature He had made: "THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD".
    Paine's view that Christianity was false legitimated his political radicalism, in that to his mind it deprived inegalitarian political arrangements of their buttress. Christianity, in his view, had adapted paganism to the assistance of the great, so that "the Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue". In his view compulsory religion and oppressive states were brethren.
    It is clear, besides, that proselytizing for deism was important to Paine as an activity in itself. It is easy to see that he conceived a series of artificial hierarchies, mutually supportive and all equally against nature... [H]e viewed Christianity as their intellectual type and political foundation, so that its destruction and supersession by deism were central to his enterprise. About one-quarter of his works was devoted to theology.
    • Ian Harris, 'Paine and Burke: God, nature and politics', in Michael Bentley (ed.), Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History presented to Maurice Cowling (1993), pp. 51-52
  • As an act of kindness Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine every day for six weeks before his death. He frequently sat up with him, and did so on the last two nights of his life. He was always there with Dr. Manley, the physician, and assisted in removing Mr. Paine while his bed was prepared. He was present when Dr. Manley asked Mr. Paine "if he wished to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God," and he describes Mr. Paine's answer as animated. He says that lying on his back he used some action and with much emphasis, replied, "I have no wish to believe on that subject." He lived some time after this, but was not known to speak, for he died tranquilly.
  • Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.
  • It was the American Revolution's patriot and pamphleteer, Thomas Paine... who launched the social-democratic tradition in the 1790s. In his pamphlets, Rights of Man and Agrarian Justice, Paine outlined plans for combating poverty that would become what we today call Social Security.
    As Paine put it in the latter work, since God has provided the earth and the land upon it as a collective endowment for humanity, those who have come to possess the land as private property owe the dispossessed an annual rent for it. Specifically, Paine delineated a limited redistribution of income by way of a tax on landed wealth and property. The funds collected were to provide both grants for young people to get started in life and pensions for the elderly.
  • In 1776, Tom Paine wrote in his rabble-rousing pamphlet Common Sense, "It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow." Well, the distance is closing, and soon enough no one will be safe from the sorrow of ecocide.
    • Naomi Klein This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014)
  • When I came home from church, for a while, my father insisted on reading aloud to me from Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason-a diatribe against institutional religion.
  • When Bonaparte returned from Italy he called on Mr. Paine and invited him to dinner: in the course of his rapturous address to him he declared that a statue of gold ought to be erected to him in every city in the universe, assuring him that he always slept with his book "Rights of Man" under his pillow and conjured him to honor him with his correspondence and advice.
    This anecdote is only related as a fact. Of the sincerity of the compliment, those may judge who know Bonaparte's principles best.
  • The First Amendment to the United States Constitution encourages a diversity of religions but does not prohibit criticism of religion. In fact it protects and encourages criticism of religion. Religions ought to be subject to at least the same degree of skepticism as, for example, contentions about UFO visitations or Velikovskian catastrophism. I think it is healthy for the religions themselves to foster skepticism about the fundamental underpinnings of their evidential bases. There is no question that religion provides a solace and support, a bulwark in time of emotional need, and can serve extremely useful social roles. But it by no means follows that religion should be immune from testing, from critical scrutiny, from skepticism. It is striking how little skeptical discussion of religion there is in the nation that Tom Paine, the author of The Age of Reason, helped to found. I hold that belief systems that cannot survive scrutiny are probably not worth having.
  • [T]he Rights of Man is a foundation-text of the English working-class movement... Paine speaks for the governed, and assumes that the authority of government derives from conquest and inherited power in a class-based society... What he gave to the people was a new rhetoric of radical egalitarianism, which touched the deepest responses of the ‘free-born Englishman’ and which penetrated the sub-political attitude of the urban working people... [T]he Paine tradition runs strongly through the popular journalism of the nineteenth century... It is strongly challenged in the 1880s, but the tradition and the rhetoric are still alive in Blatchford and in the popular appeal of Lloyd George. We can almost say that Paine established a new framework within which Radicalism was confined for nearly 100 years.
  • I have been lately introduced to the famous Thomas Paine, and like him very well. He is vain beyond all belief, but he has reason to be vain, and for my part I forgive him. He has done wonders for the cause of liberty, both in America and Europe, and I believe him to be conscientiously an honest man. He converses extremely well; and I find him wittier in discourse than in his writings, where his humour is clumsy enough.
  • Paine and Voltaire had their admirers; and when it was a punishable offence to read the works of the former, a few, who thought highly of his Rights of Man and Age of Reason, would assemble in secret places on the mountains, and, taking the works from concealed places under a large boulder or so, read them with great unction. But if Paine had admirers he had also enemies, for at the same time religious men had the nails in their boots arranged to form T. P., that then they might figuratively tread Tom Paine underfoot.
  • Ideas of female equality were in the air during and after the Revolution. Tom Paine spoke out for the equal rights of women. And the pioneering book of Mary Wollstonecraft in England, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was reprinted in the United States shortly after the Revolutionary War.


Misattributed Quotes about Paine

[edit]
These are quotations about Paine have been wrongly attributed
  • I never tire of reading Tom Paine.
    • Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in A Literary History of the American People‎ (1931) by Charles Angoff, p. 270. James M. Cornelius, Ph.D., the curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, says he "find[s] nothing that puts those words into his mouth" and describes the quote as "an exaggeration."

See also

[edit]
Social and political philosophers
Classic Aristotle • Marcus Aurelius • Chanakya • Cicero • Confucius • Mozi • Laozi • Mencius • Mozi • Plato • Plutarch • Polybius • Seneca the Younger • Socrates • Sun Tzu • Thucydides • Xenophon • Xun Zi
Conservative de Benoist • Bolingbroke • Bonald • Burke • Burnham • Carlyle • Coleridge • Comte • Cortés • Durkheim • Dávila • Evola • Fichte • Filmer • Galton • Gentile • Hegel • Heidegger • Herder • Hobbes • Hoppe • Hume • de Jouvenel • Jünger • Kirk • von Kuehnelt-Leddihn • Land • de Maistre • Mansfield • Mosca • Oakeshott • Ortega • Pareto • Peterson • Santayana • Schmitt • Scruton • Sowell • Spengler • Strauss • Taine • Tocqueville • Vico • Voegelin • Weaver • Yarvin
Liberal Acton • Arendt • Aron • Bastiat • Beccaria • Bentham • Berlin • Boétie • Camus • Condorcet • Constant • Dworkin • Emerson • Erasmus • Franklin • Fukuyama • Hayek • Jefferson • Kant • Locke • Machiavelli • Madison • Mill • Milton • Mencken • Mises • Montaigne • Montesquieu • Nietzsche • Nozick • Ortega • Popper • Rand • Rawls • Rothbard • Sade • Schiller • Simmel • Smith • Spencer • Spinoza • de Staël • Stirner • Thoreau • Tocqueville • Tucker • Voltaire • Weber • Wollstonecraft
Religious al-Ghazali • Ambedkar • Augustine of Hippo • Aquinas • Augustine • Aurobindo • Calvin • Chesterton • Dante • Dayananda • Dostoyevsky • Eliade • Gandhi • Girard • Gregory • Guénon • Jesus • John of Salisbury • Jung • Kierkegaard • Kołakowski • Lewis • Luther • Maimonides • Malebranche • Maritain • More • Muhammad • Müntzer • Niebuhr • Ockham • Origen • Philo • Pizan • Qutb • Radhakrishnan • Shariati • Solzhenitsyn • Taylor • Teilhard de Chardin • Tertullian • Tolstoy • Vivekananda • Weil
Socialist Adorno • Aflaq • Agamben • Badiou • Bakunin • Baudrillard • Bauman • Bernstein • Butler • Chomsky • de Beauvoir • Debord • Deleuze • Dewey • Du Bois • Engels • Fanon • Foucault • Fourier • Fromm • Godwin • Goldman • Gramsci • Habermas • Kropotkin • Lenin • London • Luxemburg • Mao • Marcuse • Marx • Mazzini • Negri • Owen • Paine Rorty • Rousseau • Russell • Saint-Simon • Sartre • Skinner • Sorel • Trotsky • Walzer • Deng • Žižek


[edit]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Wikisource
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Commons
Commons
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Paine&oldid=3806906"