Jan 1, 1791
He must now show that every one in the line of hereditary succession was a Solomon, or his title is not good to be a king.
Thomas Paine
The Public Record
Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, inventor, political philosopher, and statesman. His pamphlets Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783) framed the Patriot argument for independence from Great Britain at the outset of the American Revolution. Paine advanced Enlightenment-era arguments for human rights that shaped revolutionary discourse on both sides of the Atlantic.
gutenberg.org
Jan 1, 1791
The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good, or good evil, just as it pleases.
Jan 1, 1791
A thousand years hence, those who shall live in America or France, will look back with contemplative pride on the origin of their government, and say, This was the work of our glorious ancestors!
Jan 1, 1791
The opinions of men with respect to government are changing fast in all countries.
Jan 1, 1791
The Revolutions of America and France have thrown a beam of light over the world, which reaches into man.
Jan 1, 1791
The enormous expense of governments has provoked people to think, by making them feel; and when once the veil begins to rend, it admits not of repair.
Jan 1, 1791
Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it.
Jan 1, 1791
It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.
Jan 1, 1791
The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.
Jan 1, 1791
Those who talk of a counter-revolution in France, show how little they understand of man.
Jan 1, 1791
The means must be an obliteration of knowledge; and it has never yet been discovered how to make man unknow his knowledge, or unthink his thoughts.
Jan 1, 1791
That the Bastille was attacked with an enthusiasm of heroism, such only as the highest animation of liberty could inspire, and carried in the space of a few hours, is an event which the world is fully possessed of.