Thomas Paine in Today's World

May 17, 2007

  • 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

May 16, 2007

  • On Fear as a Tactic

    When an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order.
       Thomas Paine

May 9, 2007

April 30, 2007

  • On Being What You Think

    The mind of man is not sufficiently capacious to attend to every thing at once, and while it suffers itself to be eaten up by narrow prejudices or fretted by personal politics, it will have neither relish nor appetite for public virtues.
       Thomas Paine

April 25, 2007

  • On Losing Sight of the Real Issue

    It often happens that the weight of an argument is lost by the wit of setting it off; or the judgment disordered by an intemperate irritation of the passions.
       Thomas Paine

April 20, 2007

  • On Fear and Truth

    …the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
    But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.
       Thomas Paine

April 19, 2007

  • On Paying the Taxman

    When we think or talk about taxes, we ought to recollect that we lie down in peace and sleep in safety; that we can follow our farms or stores or other occupations, in prosperous tranquillity; and that these inestimable blessings are procured to us by the taxes that we pay. In this view, our taxes are properly our insurance money; they are what we pay to be made safe, and, in strict policy, are the best money we can lay out
       Thomas Paine

April 13, 2007

April 9, 2007

  • On Trying Too Hard to Tell the Truth

    There is a general and striking difference between the genuine effects of truth itself, and the effects of falsehood believed to be truth. Truth is naturally benign; but falsehood believed to be truth is always furious. The former delights in serenity, is mild and persuasive, and seeks not the auxiliary aid of invention. The latter sticks at nothing.
       Thomas Paine

March 27, 2007

  • On the Toll of War

    It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war, that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other times appear so amiable. The continued spectacle of woe, blunts the finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, moral obligations of society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity, becomes and apology where it is truly a crime.
       Thomas Paine, The Crisis

March 23, 2007

  • On Patriotism and its Disguise

    Apostasy stalked through the land in the garb of patriotism, and the torch of treason blinded for a while the flame of liberty.

March 19, 2007

  • On Four Years of War in Iraq

    O ye partial ministers of your own acknowledged principals. If the bearing arms be sinful, the first going to war must be more so, by all the difference between wilful attack and unavoidable defence. Wherefore, if ye really preach from conscience, and mean not to make a political hobbyhorse of your religion, convince the world thereof, by proclaiming your doctrine to our enemies, for they likewise bear ARMS.
       Thomas Paine, Common Sense

March 12, 2007

March 5, 2007

  • On Keeping an Open Mind

    I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
    -Thomas Paine, Age of Reason

March 2, 2007

  • On Darfur

    For that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.
    -Thomas Paine

March 1, 2007

  • On Patience and Understanding Among Reasonable People

    There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.
    -Thomas Paine

February 27, 2007

February 22, 2007

  • On Learning From the Past

    "Were a man to be totally deprived of memory, he would be incapable of forming any just opinion."
    There is the memory of a singles person's life, that of whole nations and tribes, and the collective memory of all humanity. (…)

  • On What Makes a Cold Heart

    "Arrogance and meanness, though in appearance opposite, are vices of the same heart."
    Through arrogance we find a haughty sense of pride that disregards all but itself. (…)

February 18, 2007

  • On Not Giving Up

    It ought not to be, that because we cannot do everything, that we ought not to do what we can.
    -Thomas Paine