Harvey J. Kaye > Quotes

“Paine’s texts may be selectively read and variably interpreted, but as much as those on the political right can quote and try to command him, Paine himself was no conservative. He was a radical, a revolutionary democrat. He fought to liberate men and women from the authoritarianism of states, classes, and churches and to empower them to think for and govern themselves.13”
― Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America: A History & Biography

“My own mind is my own church.”43”
― Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America: A History & Biography

“ensuing”
― Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America: A History & Biography

“Our Age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? … The sun shines today also … There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.”
― Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America: A History & Biography