Thomas Paine: “It serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent people from looking into the defects and abuses of government.”

I know the value of moral instruction, and I have seen the danger of the contrary.

He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

The man who is in the receipt of a million a year is the last person to promote a spirit of reform, lest, in the event, it should reach to himself.

The Aristocracy had hitherto opposed the despotism of the Court, and affected the language of patriotism; but it opposed it as its rival (as the English Barons opposed King John) and it now opposed the nation from the same motives.