Thomas Paine: “The excess may serve to keep corruption alive, but it has no re-action on credit and commerce, like the interest of the…”

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, therefore, the good to be obtained be worthy of a passive, rational, and costless revolution, it would be bad policy to prefer waiting for a calamity that should force a violent one.

I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all.

In those which proceed from the former cause, the temper becomes incensed and soured; and the redress, obtained by danger, is too often sullied by revenge.