Thomas Paine: “The European world is too experienced to be imposed upon, and America too wise to be duped.”

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.

It was Government dethroning Government; and the old one, by attempting to make a new one, made a chasm.

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.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact.