Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.”

— Thomas Paine

102. “The birthday of a new world is at hand.”

— Thomas Paine

103. “Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

— Thomas Paine

104. “When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.”

— Thomas Paine

105. “The right of voting for representatives, is the primary right by which other rights are protected.”

— Thomas Paine

106. “The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.”

— Thomas Paine

107. “’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

— Thomas Paine

108. “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 Paine

109. “Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS...”

— Thomas Paine

110. “Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”

— Thomas Paine

111. “But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”

— Thomas Paine

112. “To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.”

— Thomas Paine

113. “I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.”

— Thomas Paine

114. “Let them call me rebel, I feel no concern from it.”

— Thomas Paine

115. “The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.”

— Thomas Paine

116. “It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.”

— Thomas Paine

117. “To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.”

— Thomas Paine

118. “The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate.”

— Thomas Paine

119. “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.”

— Thomas Paine

120. “The protection of a man’s person is more sacred than the protection of his property.”

— Thomas Paine

121. “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

122. “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”

— Thomas Paine

123. “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.”

— Thomas Paine

124. “A government of our own is our natural right; and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.”

— Thomas Paine

125. “It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.”

— Thomas Paine

126. “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.”

— Thomas Paine

127. “Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.”

— Thomas Paine

128. “The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together; and it is only in the last push that one or the other takes the lead.”

— Thomas Paine

129. “Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.”

— Thomas Paine

130. “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

132. “The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.”

— Thomas Paine

133. “From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?”

— Thomas Paine

134. “The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”

— Thomas Paine

135. “One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”

— Thomas Paine

136. “It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

— Thomas Paine

137. “It is by tracing things to their origin, that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them.”

— Thomas Paine

138. “The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.”

— Thomas Paine

139. “Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.”

— Thomas Paine

140. “The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.”

— Thomas Paine

141. “Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.”

— Thomas Paine

142. “Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

— Thomas Paine

143. “I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state; up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake.”

— Thomas Paine

144. “The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture.”

— Thomas Paine

145. “Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.”

— Thomas Paine

146. “You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.”

— Thomas Paine

147. “Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.”

— Thomas Paine

148. “When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

— Thomas Paine

149. “Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance.”

— Thomas Paine

150. “It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt.”

— Thomas Paine