Tom Paine 1737-1809
[Tom Paine was the all time greatest political thinker / revolutionary, and philosopher of the Enlightenment!]
“He that rebels against reason is a real rebel.”
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
“Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.”
“A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all...”
“It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.”
“...neither is it proper that I should take the word of a man as the word of God, and put man in the place of God.”
[Two hundred and fifty years after the circumnavigation of the Earth, a new reality was emerging: no just god has provided any clear revelation to the majority of humanity. Their quotes plainly show that Ethan Allen, Tom Paine, and Thomas Jefferson realized very clearly that all religions are geographically provincial traditions that could no longer be thought of as objective reality by any fair minded person who has reached the age of reason. You can't believe in equality and also believe in a provincial religion that was unfairly revealed by a perfect and almighty Creator. This is a paradigm example of not thinking seriously about the significance and importance of other people. This religious tradition of not thinking seriously explains how Christian education simultaneously produced Nazis and Bolsheviks. Only the smallest or the most self-centered minds regard provincial traditions as factual.]
“It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradation we surmount the force of local prejudice as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world.”
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
“The word of God is the creation we behold and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man...”
“That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science...is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.”
“It has been by rejecting the evidence that the word or works of God in the creation afford to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith and of religion have been fabricated and set up. There may be many systems of religion that, so far from being morally bad, are in many respects morally good; but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever-existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the strange construction of the Christian system of faith that every evidence the Heavens afford to man either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd.”
“That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising.”
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”
“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”
“The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of man change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.”
“I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
“In America, the law is king.”
“Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.”
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
“The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only the last push, in which one or the other takes the lead.”
“It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich.”
“I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, “Well! give me peace in my day.” Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;” and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.”
“There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them...”
“The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America.”
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.”
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
“It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.”
“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
“Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.”
“The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct.”
“Whenever we read the obscene stories the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon rather than the word of God.”
“A long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT.”
“To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.”
“An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”
“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it ask, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.”
“Nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.”
Socialism:
“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”
“When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
“Independence is my happiness”...“Reason obeys itself.”
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
