Thomas Paine: “The worst of all policies is that of doing things by halves.”

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.

I know the value of moral instruction, and I have seen the danger of the contrary.

He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

The meaning, then, good people, of all this, is: That government is governed by no principle whatever; that it can make evil good, or good evil, just as it pleases.