Thomas Paine: “How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses…”

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

It was a sort of new form of government that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge it from the superstitious authority of antiquity.

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.

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.