The period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest … The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’tis time to part.
Tag: Thomas Paine
(1737–1809) Author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Why they fought
We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.
Freedom, reason, and the slavery of fear
Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
The problem of governments
The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.
No right to self-defense, no peace
If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors.
Honesty isn’t always pretty
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
Resisting depotism
The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
True patriotism
The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.
Character matters
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.
Mismanagement shown by debts and taxes
Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?