Thomas Paine

When the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects.

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…

It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward.

By continuing this absurdity, man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts, for a king, or a chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not elect for a constable.

How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses to flow!

Do we need a stronger evidence of the absurdity of hereditary government than is seen in the descendants of those men, in any line of life, who once were famous?

I know not whether Homer or Euclid had sons; but I will venture an opinion that if they had, and had left their works unfinished, those sons could not have completed them.

An hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an hereditary author.

I smile to myself when I contemplate the ridiculous insignificance into which literature and all the sciences would sink, were they made hereditary; and I carry the same idea into governments.

As the republic of letters brings forward the best literary productions, by giving to genius a fair and universal chance; so the representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom from where…

The hereditary system, therefore, is as repugnant to human wisdom as to human rights; and is as absurd as it is unjust.

It would be as ridiculous to attempt to fix the hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom.