“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.”

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

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Thomas Paine262

English and American political activist 1737–1809

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