Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship 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.”

— Thomas Paine

152. “Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off.”

— Thomas Paine

153. “A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right.”

— Thomas Paine

154. “Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

— Thomas Paine

155. “The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.”

— Thomas Paine

156. “Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.”

— Thomas Paine

157. “There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.”

— Thomas Paine

158. “Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.”

— Thomas Paine

159. “The art of publicity is a black art; but it has come to stay, and every year adds to its potency.”

— Thomas Paine

160. “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”

— Thomas Paine

161. “Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.”

— Thomas Paine

162. “There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave.”

— Thomas Paine

163. “There is no greater tyranny than that of the dead over the living.”

— Thomas Paine

164. “I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”

— Thomas Paine

165. “Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.”

— Thomas Paine

166. “The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.”

— Thomas Paine

167. “It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same.”

— Thomas Paine

168. “We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”

— Thomas Paine

169. “The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty.”

— Thomas Paine

170. “Time makes more converts than reason.”

— Thomas Paine

171. “There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.”

— Thomas Paine

172. “Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.”

— Thomas Paine

173. “Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.”

— Thomas Paine

174. “Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. 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.”

— Thomas Paine

175. “Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men can forgive sins and you will have sins in abundance.”

— Thomas Paine

176. “An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.”

— Thomas Paine

177. “Human nature is not of itself vicious.”

— Thomas Paine

178. “When I see throughout this book, called the Bible, a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales and stories, I could not so dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name.”

— Thomas Paine

179. “He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”

— Thomas Paine

180. “The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”

— Thomas Paine

181. “A government of our own is our natural right.”

— Thomas Paine

182. “Politics and self-interest have been so uniformly connected, that the world, from being so often deceived, has a right to be suspicious of public characters.”

— Thomas Paine

183. “It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God and have credit among us.”

— Thomas Paine

184. “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”

— Thomas Paine

185. “Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.”

— Thomas Paine

186. “War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.”

— Thomas Paine

187. “Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.”

— Thomas Paine

188. “Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.”

— Thomas Paine

189. “Science is the true theology.”

— Thomas Paine

190. “Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:-For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.”

— Thomas Paine

191. “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

— Thomas Paine

192. “Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.”

— Thomas Paine

193. “The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.”

— Thomas Paine

194. “Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.”

— Thomas Paine

195. “The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.”

— Thomas Paine

196. “Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.”

— Thomas Paine

197. “It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.”

— Thomas Paine

198. “That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.”

— Thomas Paine

199. “When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.”

— Thomas Paine

200. “The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar.”

— Thomas Paine