Thomas Paine

The defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to point them out.

It is for the good of nations and not for the emolument or aggrandisement of particular individuals, that government ought to be established, and that mankind are at the expense of supporting it.

If a law be bad it is one thing to oppose the practice of it, but it is quite a different thing to expose its errors, to reason on its defects, and to show cause why it should be repealed, or why another ought to be substituted in its…

It would be an act of despotism, or what in England is called arbitrary power, to make a law to prohibit investigating the principles, good or bad, on which such a law, or any other is founded.

The greatest condemnation that could be passed upon it would be a refutation.

Pardoning the pun, it must be criminal justice indeed that should condemn a work as a substitute for not being able to refute it.

But until this be done, I shall so far take the sense of the public for my guide (and the world knows I am not a flatterer) that what they do not think worth while to read, is not worth mine to answer.

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

A set of childish thinkers, and half-way politicians born in the last century, men who went no farther with any principle than as it suited their purposes as a party; the nation was always left out of the question; and this has been the…

Principles must stand on their own merits, and if they are good they certainly will.

A great field was opening to the view of mankind by means of the French Revolution.

But when principle, and not place, is the energetic cause of action, a man, I find, is everywhere the same.