Thomas Paine Quotes

You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.

There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.

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.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

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.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

These are the times that try men’s souls.

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.

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.

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.