Thomas Paine: “The former tyranny of England served to people it, and the virtue of the adventurers to improve it.”

But where genuine principles of liberty pervade a people, every thing is restored to order; and the soldier civilly treated, returns the civility.

There is, therefore, no power but the voluntary will of the people that has a right to act in any matter respecting a general reform; and by the same right that two persons can confer on such a subject, a thousand may.

The insulted German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning to think.

Why may we not suppose, that the great Father of all is pleased with variety of devotion; and that the greatest offence we can act, is that by which we seek to torment and render each other miserable?