Thomas Paine: “They had resolved to abandon their homes, to resign them to destruction, and to seek new settlements rather than submit.”

Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence.

He writes neither in the character of a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but in the fawning character of that creature known in all countries, and a friend to none--a courtier.

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.

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.