Jan 1, 1791
The more it is struck the more sparks it will emit; and the fear is it will not be struck enough.
Thomas Paine
The Public Record
Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.
gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1791
It has nothing to dread from attacks; truth has given it an establishment, and time will record it with a name as lasting as his own.
Jan 1, 1791
He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king.
Jan 1, 1791
The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good, or good evil, just as it pleases.
Jan 1, 1791
The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries.
Jan 1, 1791
The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into man.
Jan 1, 1791
Those who talk of a counter-revolution in France, show how little they understand of man.
Jan 1, 1791
It operates to preclude the consent of the succeeding generations; and the preclusion of consent is despotism.
Jan 1, 1791
It is no relief, but an aggravation to a person in slavery, to reflect that he was sold by his parent; and as that which heightens the criminality of an act cannot be produced to prove the legality of it, hereditary succession cannot be…
Jan 1, 1791
In whatever light hereditary succession, as growing out of the will and testament of some former generation, presents itself, it is an absurdity.
Jan 1, 1791
Representation is of itself the delegated monarchy of a nation, and cannot debase itself by dividing it with another.