Thomas Paine: “What lately appeared to us misfortunes, were only blessings in disguise; and the seeming advantages on your side have…”

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 present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world.

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…

When a nation changes its opinion and habits of thinking, it is no longer to be governed as before; but it would not only be wrong, but bad policy, to attempt by force what ought to be accomplished by reason.