Thomas Paine

If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any…

If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must now refer.

Here our enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home.

It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation.

The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing.

If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand…

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity.

Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.

Wisdom and policy now consisted in changing a scene of danger into a happy event.

The Revolution could derive no benefit from confusion, and its opposers might.

If the crimes of men were exhibited with their sufferings, stage effect would sometimes be lost, and the audience would be inclined to approve where it was intended they should commiserate.

It suits his purpose to exhibit the consequences without their causes.