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
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
Government is a necessary evil
The guilt of a government is the crime of a whole country.
Governments arise either out of the people or over the people.
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.
A government of our own is our natural right
It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments...
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?
Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security.
The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.
Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
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.