Thomas Paine in Today's World

On Making it Easy vs. Making it Right
“Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. (…)

On Getting Over Yourself
“Among ridiculous things nothing is more ridiculous than ridiculous rage”– Thomas Paine
Life is hard enough. (…)

On False Truths
“There is a general and striking difference between the genuine effects of truth itself, and the effects of falsehood believed to be truth. (…)

On the Dangers of Blind Trust, Irrational Loyalty, and Unaccountable Leaders
“When it is laid down as a maxim, that a king can do no wrong, it places him in a state of similar security with that of idiots and persons insane, and responsibility is out of the question with respect to himself.”
Demanding blind loyalty and cronyism, shunning any criticism and persecuting the critic, allowing dogma, time after time, to trump reality, and using fear to enforce irrational doctrine and open contempt for the constraints of established law – and of congress…
Be it a King in the 18th century or a President in the 21st, it is madness to not hold those in power to account of their abuses and utter failure of power. (…)

On the Built Society and Balance with Nature
“Taking it then for granted, that no person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been, had he been born in a state of nature, and that civilization ought to have made, and ought still to make, provision for that purpose, it can only be done by subtracting from property a portion equal in value to the natural inheritance it has absorbed.”-Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
We live, most of us, generally detached from nature, in what Paine calls here a “state of civilization”. For many this detachment provides food, warmth, and shelter from the vagaries of nature’s whim. (…)

On Convictions, Messianic Missions, Delusions, and Accepting Reality in Iraq
“It is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the fact.”-Thomas Paine, Age of Reason
When a belief defies readily available facts, it becomes a delusion. (…)

On Celebrating Thomas Paine and the Spirit of '76
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
-Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
On the Fourth of July it is good to remember that all we take so very much for granted was not always so. (…)

On the True Source of Political Power
All power exercised over a Nation must have some beginning. I must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is turst, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

On the Forthright and the Deceiver
How nearly is human cunning allied to folly! The animals to whom nature has given the faculty we call cunning, know always when to use it, and use it wisely; but when man descends to cunning, he blunders and betrays.
-Thomas Paine

On Meaningless Titles and Knowing That the Emperor Has No Clothes
When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise the absurdity.
-Thomas Paine

On Beauty, Being Without Words, and Chills Going Up the Spine
We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal. The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their magnitude, find no way out — and, in the struggle of expression, every finger tries to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems too little for the mind, and we look about for helps to show our thoughts by.
-Thomas Paine

On Learning to Sit Quietly and Listen
“There are cases in which silence is a loud language.”-Thomas Paine
It is a world of constant chatter, most of it signifying nothing. (…)

On Defining Victory in Iraq
“There is something in a war carried on by invasion which makes it differ in circumstances from any other mode of war, because he who conducts it cannot tell whether the ground he gains, be for him, or against him, when he first makes it.”
-Thomas Paine, The Crisis
News Item: “US Forces Face Bloody Start to June in Iraq”
Whatever idea there was of what victory would look like when the United States military rolled across the desert toward Baghdad in the spring of 2003, it bears little resemblance to what it could ever look like today – if any sort of “victory” is even a possibility. (…)

On Doing What is Right vs. Doing What is Popular
“I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.”-Thomas Paine
Popularity thus becomes important only after the crave of fashion and expediance has faded. (…)

On Why We All Need Help - And a Friend
“The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. (…)

On the Ongoing Saga of Alberto Gonzales and the Department of Justice
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
Thomas Paine

On Why We Dream
I am apt to think that the wisest men dream the most inconsistently. For as the judgment has nothing or very little to do in regulating the circumstances of a dream, it necessarily follows that the more powerful and creative the imagination is, the wilder it runs in that state of unrestrained invention; while those who are unable to wander out of the track of common thinking when awake, never exceed the boundaries of common nature when asleep.
Thomas Paine

On Learning and Living
Every person of learning is finally his own teacher, the reason of which is that principles, being a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception.
Thomas Paine