To bring the matter to one point, Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says, No, to this question, is an independent, for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own law, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy which this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like.


Thomas Paine

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When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress i...
THOMAS PAINE
We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introdu...
THOMAS PAINE
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind
THOMAS PAINE
My mind is my own church.
THOMAS PAINE
Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of ...
THOMAS PAINE
We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and N...
THOMAS PAINE
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous execution...
THOMAS PAINE
These repeated forgeries and falsifications create a well-founded suspicion that all the cases spoke...
THOMAS PAINE
All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for imposto...
THOMAS PAINE
It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and fi...
THOMAS PAINE
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right, and r...
THOMAS PAINE
Those who expect to reap the blessings of liberty must undergo the fatigues of supporting it
THOMAS PAINE
Let them call me rebel, and welcome; I feel no concern from it. For I should suffer the misery of de...
THOMAS PAINE
If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.
THOMAS PAINE
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of ...
THOMAS PAINE
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst
THOMAS PAINE
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he viol...
THOMAS PAINE
These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this cris...
THOMAS PAINE
Calvinism is the belief (1) That there are three Gods (2) That good works, or the love of our neighb...
THOMAS PAINE
It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance
THOMAS PAINE
One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests
THOMAS PAINE
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on...
THOMAS PAINE
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by ...
THOMAS PAINE
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans...
THOMAS PAINE
All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for imposto...
THOMAS PAINE
The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to t...
THOMAS PAINE
Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi...
THOMAS PAINE
With respect to the books of the New Testament, particularly such parts as tell us of the resurrecti...
THOMAS PAINE
The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapte...
THOMAS PAINE
It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is...
THOMAS PAINE
In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but tha...
THOMAS PAINE
That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of n...
THOMAS PAINE
Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made, shou...
THOMAS PAINE
People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in ...
THOMAS PAINE
He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine,
he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays f...
THOMAS PAINE
As to the ancient historians, from THOMAS PAINE It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult ...
THOMAS PAINE
The Almighty Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has...
THOMAS PAINE
When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child...
THOMAS PAINE
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe w...
THOMAS PAINE
It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible...
THOMAS PAINE
But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through the air, is a thing ...
THOMAS PAINE