Thomas Paine

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Mankind are not now to be told they shall not think, or they shall not read; and publications that go no farther than to investigate principles of government, to invite men to reason and to reflect, and to show the errors and excellences…

Burke may see I have not written on Government without reflecting on what is Law, as well as on what are Rights.--The only effectual jury in such cases would be a convention of the whole nation fairly elected; for in all such cases the…

It might be said, that until men think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection.

On all such subjects men have but to think, and they will neither act wrong nor be misled.

So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political…

The object, in all such preliminary proceedings, is to find out what the general sense of a nation is, and to be governed by it.