Thomas Paine

Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence?--Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government.

What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another country? or what inducement has the manufacturer?

Can we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it?

If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and humanity disown, it is kings, courts and cabinets that must sit for the portrait.

There does not exist within such governments sufficient stamina whereon to engraft reformation; and the shortest and most effectual remedy is to begin anew on the ground of the nation.

From such beginning of governments, what could be expected but a continued system of war and extortion?

What at first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue; and the power originally usurped, they affected to inherit.

The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his prisoner, but his property.

They alternately invaded the dominions which each had assigned to himself, and the brutality with which they treated each other explains the original character of monarchy.

Though not a courtier will talk of the curfew-bell, not a village in England has forgotten it.

The hatred which the Norman invasion and tyranny begat, must have been deeply rooted in the nation, to have outlived the contrivance to obliterate it.

The origin of the present government of America and France will ever be remembered, because it is honourable to record it; but with respect to the rest, even Flattery has consigned them to the tomb of time, without an inscription.