Thomas Paine
The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better, whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of the gloomy dogmas of priests and of superstition, the study of these things is the true theology; it teaches man to know and admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable and of divine origin.Collection: Philosophy
The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.Collection: Christian
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.Collection: Class
Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Bible
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.Collection: Country
The period of debate is closed. Arms, as a last resource, must decide the contest.Collection: Arms
The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.Collection: Handwriting
Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.Collection: Mean
What more does man want to know than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this with the force it is impossible to repel, if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course.Collection: Believe
People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! It is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.Collection: Lying
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death, and religiosu wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?Collection: War
A man will pass better through the world with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected.Collection: Men
It is the object only of war that makes it honorable.Collection: War
I fear not, I see not reason for fear. In the end we will be the victors. For though at times the flame of liberty may cease to shine, the ember will never expire.Collection: Flames
"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."Collection: Government
Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind....he trades with the same countries ...(that he) would have gone to war with.Collection: Country
Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.Collection: Guilt
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.Collection: Calumny Is
In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.Collection: Belief
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.Collection: Book
I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.Collection: Eye
Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.Collection: Fog
Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.Collection: Self Esteem
When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.Collection: Sublime
To bring the matter to one point, Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says, No, to this question, is an independent, for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own law, or, whether the king, the greatest enemy which this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like.Collection: Kings
The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.Collection: Character
All this [Paul's writing] is nothing better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. Age of ReasonCollection: Writing
Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.Collection: Tears
Evils, like poisons, have their uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach.Collection: Evil
Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it.Collection: Rebel
... a thirst for power is the natural disease of monarchy.Collection: Disease
...the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.Collection: Government
A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.Collection: Two
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself.Collection: Age
From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom.Collection: Errors
A world of little cares is continually arising, which busy or affluent life knows nothing of, to open the first door to distress. Hunger is not among the postponable wants; and a day, even a few hours, in such a condition is often the crisis of a life of ruin.Collection: Doors
The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.Collection: Religious
From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?Collection: Men
There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the 'end of time,' or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.Collection: Country
We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest truest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.Collection: Encouragement
Nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice.Collection: Heaven
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.Collection: Christian
The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.Collection: Land
For freemen like brothers agree; With one spirit endured, they one friendship pursued, And their temple was Liberty TreeCollection: Brother
The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar.Collection: Jesus
And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.Collection: Men
There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart to the highest agony of human hatred.Collection: Heart
He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.Collection: Heart