Thomas Paine Quotes

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.

Science is the true theology.

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

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 always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.

The Allwise Creator hath been dishonored by being made the author of fable and the human mind degraded by believing it.

Common sense will tell us, that the power which hath endeavoured to subdue us, is of all others, the most improper to defend us.

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.

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my part, I disbelieve them all.

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

...for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.

The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.

I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and New Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries.

Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.

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

Evils, like poisons, have their uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach.

Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.

My own mind is my own church.

All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Public credit is suspicion asleep.

Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.

It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.

Human nature is not of itself vicious.

...the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.

The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.

Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.

Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

Wrong cannot have a legal descendant.

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.

Every proprietor owes to the community a ground-rent for the land which he holds.

Death is not the monarch for the dead, but of the dying. The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject.

The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.