Thomas Paine: “We cannot alter nature, neither ought we to punish the son because the father begot him in a cowardly mood.”

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.

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.

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.

Whether robbery shall be banished from courts, and wretchedness from countries?