In the list of human vices we find some of such a refined constitution, they cannot be carried into practice without seducing some virtue to their assistance; but meanness has neither alliance nor apology.
Paine distinguishes the vice of meanness from others, noting its lack of redeeming qualities or associations.
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Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage, than any victory with all its expense.
It serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent people from looking into the defects and abuses of government.
Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence.
If men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expense of building navies, filling them with men, and then…