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
The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
They may be all comprehended under three heads - 1st, Superstition; 2d, Power; 3d, the common interests of society, and the common rights of man.
The Bill of Rights should contain the general principles of natural and civil liberty. It should be to a community what the eternal laws and obligations of morality are to the conscience. It should be unalterable by any human power ...
When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example for the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other, and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.
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.
Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.
In the first part of 'Rights of Man' I have endeavoured to show...that there does not exist a right to establish hereditary government...because hereditary government always means a government yet to come, and the case always is, that the people who are to live afterwards, have always the same right to choose a government for themselves, as the people had who have lived before them.
Men should not petition for rights, but take them
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured
It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.
When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.