Thomas Paine

The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any Individual, or Any Body Of Men, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly derived from it.

Monarchical sovereignty, the enemy of mankind, and the source of misery, is abolished; and the sovereignty itself is restored to its natural and original place, the Nation.

Never, in the course of my observation, was delusion more successfully acted, nor a nation more completely deceived.

What is called the Parliament is made up of two Houses, one of which is more hereditary, and more beyond the control of the Nation than what the Crown (as it is called) is supposed to be.

The general impulse of the Nation was right; but it acted without reflection.

Pitt, on all national questions, so far as they refer to the House of Commons, absorbs the rights of the Nation into the organ, and makes the organ into a Nation, and the Nation itself into a cypher.

One member says this is Constitution, and another says that is Constitution--To-day it is one thing; and to-morrow something else--while the maintaining of the debate proves there is none.

As the present generation of the people in England did not make the Government, they are not accountable for any of its defects; but, that sooner or later, it must come into their hands to undergo a constitutional reformation, is as…

That a government could not have always gone on by the same system which has been followed for the last seventy years, must be evident to every man; and for the same reason it cannot always go on.

If any credit is given, it is to the disposition of the people to pay the tax, and not to the government, which lays it on.

Among others, it shows that a government may be in a state of insolvency and a nation rich.

Before this period, he is not trusted with the management of an acre of land, or with the heritable property of a flock of sheep, or an herd of swine; but, wonderful to tell! he may, at the age of eighteen years, be trusted with a nation.