Thomas Paine

The foundation and the superstructure of the government is bad.

The debt, therefore, is not reduced one farthing to the public by all the millions that have been paid; and it would require more money now to purchase up the capital, than when the scheme began.

The only knowledge which the public can have of the reduction of the debt, must be through the reduction of taxes for paying the interest.

The burthen of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest.

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

If ye can be kept disputing and wrangling about church and meeting, ye just answer the purpose of every courtier, who lives the while on the spoils of the taxes, and laughs at your credulity.

Ye simple men on both sides the question, do you not see through this courtly craft?

I speak on this subject with the more freedom, because I am known not to be a Presbyterian; and therefore the cant cry of court sycophants, about church and meeting, kept up to amuse and bewilder the nation, cannot be raised against me.

It is a reproach to any government to waste such an immensity of revenue in sinecures and nominal and unnecessary places and officers, and not allow even a decent livelihood to those on whom the labour falls.

When wages are fixed by what is called a law, the legal wages remain stationary, while every thing else is in progression; and as those who make that law still continue to lay on new taxes by other laws, they increase the expense of living…

Why not leave them as free to make their own bargains, as the law-makers are to let their farms and houses?

There are two classes of people to whom the laws of England are particularly hostile, and those the most helpless; younger children, and the poor.