Thomas Paine

A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact.

In doing this we shall easily discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people or over the people.

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise…

After these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre.

When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up the back-stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the government of superstition.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged.

Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.

A man, by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it.

Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent.