Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas Painewas an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination"...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth29 January 1736
CityThetford, England
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.
Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.
Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured
To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
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.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax
Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.
But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.