Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “It is not because the right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.”

— Thomas Paine

402. “Mind thine own concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can determine between you.”

— Thomas Paine

403. “I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.”

— Thomas Paine

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404. “It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself.”

— Thomas Paine

405. “It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into taxes.”

— Thomas Paine

406. “No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone.”

— Thomas Paine

407. “What Athens was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present.”

— Thomas Paine

408. “The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.”

— Thomas Paine

409. “Religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of all. Man does not learn religion as he learns the secrets and mysteries of a trade. He learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself thereto.”

— Thomas Paine

410. “The connection between vice and meanness is a fit subject for satire, but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible power of a diamond.”

— Thomas Paine

411. “A single legislature, on account of the superabundance of its power, and the uncontrolled rabidity of its execution, becomes as dangerous to the principles of liberty as that of a despotic monarch.”

— Thomas Paine

412. “The rights of men in society, are neither devisable or transferable, nor annihilable, but are descendable only, and it is not in the power of any generation to intercept finally, and cut off the descent. If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free. Wrongs cannot have a legal descent.”

— Thomas Paine

413. “I die content, I die for the liberty of my country.”

— Thomas Paine

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414. “Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.”

— Thomas Paine

415. “As war is the system of government on the old construction, the animosity which nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing more than what the policy of their governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.”

— Thomas Paine

416. “All men can understand what representation is; and that it must necessarily include a variety of knowledge and talents.”

— Thomas Paine

417. “There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice.”

— Thomas Paine

418. “The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.”

— Thomas Paine

419. “A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.”

— Thomas Paine

420. “Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.”

— Thomas Paine

421. “If thou trusteth to the book called the Scriptures, thou trusteth to the rotten staff of fables and falsehood.”

— Thomas Paine

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422. “Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.”

— Thomas Paine

423. “It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.”

— Thomas Paine

424. “Prophesying is lying professionally.”

— Thomas Paine

425. “A man will pass better through the world with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected.”

— Thomas Paine

426. “They took care to represent government as a thing made up of mysteries, which only themselves understood, and they hid from the understanding of the nation, the only thing that was beneficial to know, namely, that government is nothing more than a national association acting on the principles of society.”

— Thomas Paine

427. “The countries the most famous and the most respected of antiquity are those which distinguished themselves by promoting and patronizing science, and on the contrary those which neglected or discouraged it are universally denominated rude and barbarous.”

— Thomas Paine

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428. “It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.”

— Thomas Paine

429. “It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.”

— Thomas Paine

430. “Is it because you are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that you listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?”

— Thomas Paine

431. “The difference between a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be nothing.”

— Thomas Paine

432. “Every person of learning is finally his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception.”

— Thomas Paine

433. “The case, however, is, that the Bible will not bear examination in any part of it, which it would do if it was the Word of God. Those who most believe it are those who know least about it, and priests always take care to keep the inconsistent and contradictory parts out of sight.”

— Thomas Paine

434. “Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish best together.”

— Thomas Paine

435. “How strangely is antiquity treated! To answer some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world.”

— Thomas Paine

436. “Men do not change from enemies to friends by the alteration of a name.”

— Thomas Paine

437. “Let the world see that this nation can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to her bravest valor in time of war.”

— Thomas Paine

438. “The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.”

— Thomas Paine

439. “A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.”

— Thomas Paine

440. “As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavor to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure.”

— Thomas Paine

441. “It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.”

— Thomas Paine

442. “To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.”

— Thomas Paine

443. “Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”

— Thomas Paine

444. “Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.”

— Thomas Paine

445. “Prejudice will fall in a combat with interest.”

— Thomas Paine

446. “But the fraud being once established, could not afterward be explained, for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.”

— Thomas Paine

447. “The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government by king, lords and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason.”

— Thomas Paine

448. “He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.”

— Thomas Paine

449. “On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First, the right of declaring it: secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of conducting it after it is declared.”

— Thomas Paine

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450. “How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.”

— Thomas Paine