Thomas Paine: “The nation is the paymaster of everything, and everything must conform to its general will.”

Discussion and the general will arbitrates the question, and to this, private opinion yields with a good grace, and order is preserved uninterrupted.

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

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.

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.