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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“I bid you farewell, sincerely wishing, that as men and christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

“But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

“It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

“All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Context: O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her — Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

“The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of man change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them; and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Agrarian Justice (1797)

“Religion has two principal enemies, fanaticism and infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

“I have no wish to believe on that subject.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last words (June 1809), as quoted in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man https://books.google.com/books?id=0SKFXdyu8NoC&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=%22POPISH+STUFF%22+PAINE&source=bl&ots=zo5gRksBtU&sig=RY-gWE_UoreJyKW2iUdTSkuDVQg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHi9W1mcrLAhWFnYMKHYMsCfQQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22POPISH%20STUFF%22%20PAINE&f=false, by Christopher Hitchens, p. 140 <br class="br">1800s

“While the characters of men are forming, as is always the case in revolutions, there is a reciprocal suspicion, and a disposition to misinterpret each other; and even parties directly opposite in principle will sometimes concur in pushing forward the same movement with very different views, and with the hopes of its producing very different consequences. A great deal of this may be discovered in this embarrassed affair, and yet the issue of the whole was what nobody had in view.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Case of the Excise Officers http://www.thomaspaine.org/essays/other/case-of-the-excise-officers.html, (1772) <br class="br">1770s

“It is the nature of conquest to turn everything upside down.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study— It is the study of God through his works — It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection.
Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)