Thomas Paine

They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one line, and nothing akin to them in the other.

By nature they are children, and by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans.

Unnecessary offices and places in governments and courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.

All the children which the aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general, cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge.

They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.

By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children five are exposed.

It is the law against every other law of nature, and Nature herself calls for its destruction.

That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest.

It must now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles; and they have brought their titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering to Reason.

The patriots of France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in society must take a new ground.

The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate.

There was a time when the lowest class of what are called nobility was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armour riding throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was more stared at than a modern Duke.