Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.”

— Thomas Paine

302. “Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”

— Thomas Paine

303. “There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.”

— Thomas Paine

304. “Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.”

— Thomas Paine

305. “I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist of doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”

— Thomas Paine

306. “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

307. “I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my part, I disbelieve them all.”

— Thomas Paine

308. “Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.”

— Thomas Paine

309. “I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.”

— Thomas Paine

310. “It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.”

— Thomas Paine

311. “Though avarice will prevent a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.”

— Thomas Paine

312. “Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.”

— Thomas Paine

313. “Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches.”

— Thomas Paine

314. “All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.”

— Thomas Paine

315. “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. 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 everything its value.”

— Thomas Paine

316. “No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.”

— Thomas Paine

317. “The more men have to lose, the less willing are they to venture. The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a Spaniel.”

— Thomas Paine

318. “That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord and cultivate predjudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.”

— Thomas Paine

319. “Everything wonderful in appearance has been ascribed to angels, to devils, or to saints. Everything ancient has some legendary tale annexed to it. The common operations of nature have not escaped their practice of corrupting everything.”

— Thomas Paine

320. “The fate of Charles I has only made kings more subtle, not more just.”

— Thomas Paine

321. “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

322. “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

323. “In the following pages I offered nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, then that he will divest himself of prejudice and preposession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; but he will put on, or rather that he will not put off the true character of a man, and generously in enlarge his views beyond the present day.”

— Thomas Paine

324. “The people of America are a people of property; almost every man is a freeholder.”

— Thomas Paine

325. “Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order...”

— Thomas Paine

326. “The adulterous connection between church and state...”

— Thomas Paine

327. “Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.”

— Thomas Paine

328. “As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith.”

— Thomas Paine

329. “It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.”

— Thomas Paine

330. “If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.”

— Thomas Paine

331. “The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.”

— Thomas Paine

332. “There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state. The construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity.”

— Thomas Paine

333. “Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect that his mind was forever young, his temper ever serene; science, that never grows gray, was always his mistress. He was never without an object, for when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a hospital waiting for death.”

— Thomas Paine

334. “Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death.”

— Thomas Paine

335. “The Almighty implanted in us these inextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of His image in our heart. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals.”

— Thomas Paine

336. “Virtue is not hereditary.”

— Thomas Paine

337. “But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes?”

— Thomas Paine

338. “But in addition to all the moral evidence against the Bible, I will, in the progress of this work, produce such other evidence as even a priest cannot deny; and show, from that evidence, that the Bible is not entitled to credit, as being the word of God.”

— Thomas Paine

339. “Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing; and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.”

— Thomas Paine

340. “The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.”

— Thomas Paine

341. “A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.”

— Thomas Paine

342. “I consider the war of America against Britain as the country’s war, the public’s war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.”

— Thomas Paine

343. “Public credit is suspicion asleep.”

— Thomas Paine

344. “And this manner of speaking of the Almighty, as one would speak of a man, is consistent with nothing but the stupidity of the Bible.”

— Thomas Paine

345. “Government is best which governs least.”

— Thomas Paine

346. “In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.”

— Thomas Paine

347. “As my object was not myself, I set out with the determination, and happily with the disposition, of not being moved by praise or censure, friendship or calumny, nor of being drawn from my purpose by any personal altercation; and the man who cannot do this, is not fit for a public character.”

— Thomas Paine

348. “The artificial noble shrinks into a dwarf before the noble of nature; and in the few instances (for there are some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in aristocracy, those men despise it.”

— Thomas Paine

349. “And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing and benevolent in the heart of man.”

— Thomas Paine

350. “The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power...”

— Thomas Paine