Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas Painewas an English-American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he inspired the rebels in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination"...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth29 January 1736
CityThetford, England
Thomas Paine quotes about
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.
Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but it is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is the pope selling or granting indulgences.
The moral duty of man consists of imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. Everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals is a violation of moral duty
...the true greatness of a nation is founded on principles of humanity.
The obscene and vulgar stories in the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a Divine Being, as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes to Him are repugnant to our ideas of His justice.
Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death.
Therefore we say that a lying Spirit has been in the mouth of the writers of the books of the Bible.
To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right.
Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.
Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
In a chariot of light from the region of the day, the Goddess of Liberty came. She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love, the plant she named Liberty Tree.
Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.
From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom,
...for though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.