Jess > Jess's Quotes

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
― Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
― Thomas Paine

“There is a very great difference — is there not? — between the temporal and the eternal judgments, a very great difference between a man's reputation and a man's character, for reputation is what men think and say of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us.”
― Price Collier

“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.”
― thomas paine, Rights of Man

“The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
― Thomas Paine

“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”
― Thomas Paine

“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.”
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed
and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.”
― Thomas Paine

“Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie. ”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“Better fare hard with good men than feast it with bad.”
― Thomas Paine

“Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”
― Thomas Paine

“To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected.”
― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
― Thomas Paine

“Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power.”
― Thomas Paine

“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”
― Thomas Paine

“When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government”
― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

“An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. Neither the Channel nor the Rhine will arrest its progress. It will march on the horizon of the world and it will conquer.”
― Thomas Paine

“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.”
― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

“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.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
― Thomas Paine

“The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.”
― Thomas Paine

“But any war is harvest to such Governments, however ruinous it may be to a nation. It serves to keep up deceitful expectations, which prevent a people looking into the defects and abuses of Government. It is the "lo here!" and the "lo there!" that amuses and cheats the multitude.”
― Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
― Thomas Paine

“All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.”
― Samuel Adams

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”
― Samuel Adams

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”
― Samuel Adams

“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
― Samuel Adams