Thomas Paine Quotes

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”

“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”

“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”

“Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”

“It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.”

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”

“There are two distinct classes of what are called thoughts: those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord.”

“Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.”

“The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.”

“Human nature is not of itself vicious.”

“Suspicion is the companion of mean souls, and the bane of all good society.”

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person.”

“He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith than George the Third.”

“He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

“War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.”

“It is the object only of war that makes it honourable.”

“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”

“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

“My own mind is my own church.”

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.”

“Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.”

“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

“Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be true.”

“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.”