“It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.”

— Thomas Paine , book Rights of Man

Part 2.5 Chapter III. Of the old and new systems of government
1790s, Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792)

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Thomas Paine 262

English and American political activist 1737–1809

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