Thomas Paine

The present generation will reap the benefits of the revolution, but the future generations will be the most benefited.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.

Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.

Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are.

It [hereditary succession] appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally puts children over men, and the conceits of non-age over wisdom and experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.

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.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

The vanity of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title.

One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example to the poor to plunder the rich of his property.

By the universal economy of nature it is known, and by the instance of the Jews it is proved, that the human species has a tendency to degenerate, in any small number of persons, when separated from the general stock of society, and intermarrying constantly with each other.

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.

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.