Thomas Paine: “Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society.”

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

But from such opposition the French Revolution, instead of suffering, receives an homage.

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.

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.