Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.”

— Thomas Paine

52. “I would not dare so dishonor my Creator’s name by attaching it to this filthy book.”

— Thomas Paine

53. “Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness.”

— Thomas Paine

54. “The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.”

— Thomas Paine

55. “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

— Thomas Paine

56. “To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.”

— Thomas Paine

57. “What is it the Bible teaches us? – raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”

— Thomas Paine

58. “Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

— Thomas Paine

59. “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind.”

— Thomas Paine

60. “All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.”

— Thomas Paine

61. “There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”

— Thomas Paine

62. “In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.”

— Thomas Paine

63. “Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”

— Thomas Paine

64. “Government is a necessary evil.”

— Thomas Paine

65. “The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”

— Thomas Paine

66. “The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.”

— Thomas Paine

67. “If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.”

— Thomas Paine

68. “Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

— Thomas Paine

69. “It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.”

— Thomas Paine

70. “The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.”

— Thomas Paine

71. “An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”

— Thomas Paine

72. “I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.”

— Thomas Paine

73. “I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.”

— Thomas Paine

74. “Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.”

— Thomas Paine

75. “Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.”

— Thomas Paine

76. “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind.”

— Thomas Paine

77. “Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.”

— Thomas Paine

78. “Kill the king but spare the man.”

— Thomas Paine

79. “I fear not, I see not reason for fear. In the end we will be the victors. For though at times the flame of liberty may cease to shine, the ember will never expire.”

— Thomas Paine

80. “Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’tis time to part.”

— Thomas Paine

81. “Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

— Thomas Paine

82. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

— Thomas Paine

83. “It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

— Thomas Paine

84. “The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.”

— Thomas Paine

85. “Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another. It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man.”

— Thomas Paine

86. “What is called a republic, is not any particular form of government... it is naturally opposed to the word monarchy, which means arbitrary power.”

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

88. “The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”

— Thomas Paine

89. “To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right.”

— Thomas Paine

90. “It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.”

— Thomas Paine

91. “That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.”

— Thomas Paine

92. “A man does not serve God when he prays, for it is himself he is trying to serve.”

— Thomas Paine

93. “The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them... the weak will become prey to the strong.”

— Thomas Paine

94. “It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.”

— Thomas Paine

95. “There are two distinct classes of men – those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.”

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

97. “But where, says some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you. Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.”

— Thomas Paine

98. “Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character, which degrades it.”

— Thomas Paine

99. “It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.”

— Thomas Paine

100. “The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.”

— Thomas Paine