Thomas Paine: “His hero or his heroine must be a tragedy-victim expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of misery, sliding into…”

Man cannot, properly speaking, make circumstances for his purpose, but he always has it in his power to improve them when they occur, and this was the case in France.

Nothing can be more terrible to a Court or Courtier than the Revolution of France.

To account for this sudden transition, it is proper to observe that there are two distinct species of popularity; the one excited by merit, and the other by resentment.

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.