Thomas Paine: “The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other.”

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.

It has nothing to dread from attacks; truth has given it an establishment, and time will record it with a name as lasting as his own.

It was become evident, that no constitution, worthy of being called by that name, could be established on anything less than a national ground.

They had a cause at stake, on which depended their freedom or their slavery.