Top 500 Thomas Paine Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

403. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

406. “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

407. “Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.”

— Thomas Paine

408. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

411. “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

412. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

414. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

416. “Prophesying is lying professionally.”

— Thomas Paine

417. “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

418. “Government is not a trade which any man or body of men has a right to set up and exercise for his own emolument, but is altogether a trust, in right of those by whom that trust is delegated, and by whom it is always resumable. It has of itself no rights; they are altogether duties.”

— Thomas Paine

419. “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

420. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

426. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

429. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

436. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

438. “The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.”

— Thomas Paine

439. “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

440. “We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.”

— Thomas Paine

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

— Thomas Paine

442. “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

443. “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

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. “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.”

— Thomas Paine

447. “One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what priestcraft and fanaticism can do, and credulity believe.”

— Thomas Paine

448. “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

449. “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

450. “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